By Paul Steidler
WITH opioid deaths rising 29 percent during the pandemic, and killing more than 55,000 Americans annually, Washington must do more to save lives. It can start by enforcing the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act (STOP Act) so criminal cartels are deterred from shipping illegal opioids to America via the international postal system.
Through the leadership of Ohioâs Sen. Rob Portman, the STOP ACT gained broad bipartisan support and became law in October 2018.
It requires advanced electronic data (AED), information about the shipper, contents, and other tracking information, on all packages sent through the international postal system coming into the United States. With AED, suspicious packages are more efficiently identified and seized.
I know it’s probably not a surprise, but this new administration is soft on border security when it comes to illegal immigrants and drugs. Some of us hoped that common sense might prevail, but instead we have witnessed a surge at the southern border with people trying to enter the country illegally because of Biden’s soft message on immigration. We are seeing something similar with regard to the import of illegal opioids using the regular mails.
Right now, the Biden Administration is not enforcing existing law aggressively enough to stop overseas drug cartels from using the international postal system to serve as drug mules. This makes it easier than ever to smuggle drugs into America. The problem is that many overseas dealers of the opioid fentanyl are using regular post offices to mail the drugs into the United States because it is so easy. Our border security with regard to illegal drug imports is soft.
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AED consists of fields of information reported by shippers. The foreign postal service then shares this information with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which passes it on to CBP. Packages are tracked in transit.
AED, combined with sophisticated and fast-growing data analytics, enables many more suspicious and harmful packages to be identified and seized. And with 500 million packages entering the U.S. annually, AED is essential to the inspection process.
The technology is well established. Private shippers have been legally required to have AED on all packages to the U.S. since 2002. USPS, however, was given an exemption.
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