The House Subcommittee on Health advanced three bills aimed at combating existing and emerging drug threats during a markup led by Congressman Morgan Griffith (VA-09), Chairman of the Subcommittee, on July 15.
Griffith said, “This Health Subcommittee markup is another example of how the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is prioritizing policies to protect our communities from dangerous substances and counterfeit drug-making tools like pill presses. I am grateful we advanced such important pieces of legislation to the full Committee and that we have a Congress so dedicated to protecting the public safety of Americans.”
The legislative session resulted in H.R. 7184, the PRESS Act; H.R. 8005, the Stop Pills That Kill Act; and H.R. 5880, the Fight Illicit Pill Presses Act all being forwarded to the Full Committee by voice vote. The Stop Pills That Kill Act was amended before advancing.
During discussion of H.R. 8005, Griffith said, “The influx of illicit drugs into the U.S. has, in part, been driven by bad actors—I would say in big part—exploiting loopholes within our legal system. Currently, one of those loopholes is the unfettered importation of pill presses and their critical parts—which are, in turn, being utilized for mass production of counterfeit substances. So, as many of us have heard in various testimonies, they will make a pill that they then try to sell as pill ‘X’, which doesn’t have much of a harm to it, but it’s laced with fentanyl or some other dangerous substance. And then we have young people who are dying, thinking that they’re just getting a little boost for studies or something else. This act would give our federal prosecutors the tools they need to hold the nefarious foreign actors accountable for importing pill presses and pill equipment into the United States with the intent to illicitly produce controlled substances.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee focuses on legislation concerning energy policy, health care issues including pharmaceutical pricing and innovation efforts related to broadband deployment and environmental protection initiatives; it stands as one of Congress’s oldest standing committees dating back to its origins as the Committee on Commerce and Manufactures formed in 1795, according to its official website.