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OAN Staff Abril Elfi
3:45 PM – Wednesday, July 16, 2025
President Donald Trump has signed legislation designed to strengthen penalties for offenses involving fentanyl and its related analogs.
At a White House ceremony, Trump signed the HALT Fentanyl Act alongside politicians and families whose loved ones have since perished as a result of fentanyl.
Trump described the bill signing as a “historic step toward justice for every family touched by the fentanyl scourge as we signed the HALT Fentanyl Act into law.”
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“We’ll be getting the drug dealers, pushers, and peddlers off our street, and we will not rest until we have ended the drug overdose epidemic,” Trump said. “And it’s been getting a little bit better, but it’s horrible.”
The Act targets unauthorized fentanyl analogs, not the FDA-approved fentanyl used in hospitals for anesthesia and pain management. That medical-grade fentanyl remains classified as Schedule II, meaning it’s highly regulated but still legal for medical use. The reclassification simply closes loopholes that previously allowed underground chemists to tweak fentanyl’s molecular structure and evade federal law.
“The bill also makes several other changes to registration requirements for conducting research with controlled substances, including:
- Permitting a single registration for related research sites in certain circumstances,
- Waiving the requirement for a new inspection in certain situations, and
- Allowing a registered researcher to perform certain manufacturing activities with small quantities of a substance without obtaining a manufacturing registration,” the legislation’s webpage states.
The legislation, which received bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, permanently places all fentanyl-related substances, including synthetic variants of the opioid, on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The bill also offers law enforcement more ability to combat the spread of the substance and imposes harsher punishments for anybody convicted of possessing or distributing it.
The White House argued that the law will dissuade cartels from developing new, synthetic fentanyl-like chemicals to circumvent the Controlled Substances Act.
Speakers at the bill signing included a man named Greg Swan, whose son previously died of a fentanyl overdose, and a woman named Anne Funder, who also spoke at last summer’s Republican National Convention about her son’s fentanyl-related death.
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