California Attorney General Xavier Becerra joined a bipartisan coalition of 52 attorneys general supporting a proposed legislation to solve the ongoing opioid epidemic across the United States.
On Thursday, Becerra and his fellow attorneys general released a letter encouraging the “swift passage” of the bill called the Stopping Overdoses of Fentanyl Analogues (SOFA) Act.
U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. and Sen. Ron Johnson introduced the SOFA Act to eliminate a loophole in the federal law that allows the distribution of fentanyl analogues, which have been involved in opioid overdose deaths.
“The SOFA Act will eliminate the current loophole which keeps the controlled substance scheduling system one step behind those who manufacture fentanyl analogues and then introduce these fentanyl analogues into the opioid supply,” the attorneys general wrote in their letter.
“The SOFA Act unplugs the entire fentanyl machine in the first instance by making fentanyl analogues illegal as soon as they are manufactured, which occurs most often abroad in countries without adequate controls.”
