Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R) scored a win this week as the the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed her DISPOSE Act. The Destruction Initiative for Stored Precursors Overseas and Safe Enforcement (DISPOSE) Act will create fentanyl and precursor chemical destruction facilities in three drug trafficking choke points: Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.
The bipartisan legislation, introduced alongside Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro (D), passed this week with a unanimous vote.
Last year, Customs and Border Protection seized over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl at the Southern Border. This fentanyl is created by using Chinese chemicals that are shipped to the Americas. They are then turned into drugs in clandestine lands, and they are trafficked into the U.S. by Mexican cartels through drug mules.
Because of this, the DISPOSE Act seeks to protect Americans by cutting off their supply and targeting the precursor chemicals foreign criminal cartels use to produce fentanyl and ensuring that they can be destroyed and disposed of well before they reach the United States.
In a statement, Rep. Salazar detailed that "Fentanyl is killing thousands of Americans and we can no longer afford to sit still as our enemies flood our communities with these dangerous drugs." "The DISPOSE Act will combat the crisis by working with our partners in Latin America to destroy these drugs well before they cross our borders," she added.
Rep. Castro further detailed that "in San Antonio and communities across the world, families have endured unimaginable tragedy as a result of the fentanyl trade." In an effort to combat the growing fentanyl crisis, he went on to explain that the bipartisan bill "is an important step forward to support our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere as they work to curb the trafficking of fentanyl within their own nations."
The DISPOSE Act will establish the Precursor Chemical Destruction Initiative to fight drug trafficking alongside the United States' partners in the Western Hemisphere.
The initiative promises to do the following:
- Increase rates of seizure and destruction of listed chemicals in beneficiary countries;
- Alleviate the backlog of seized chemicals and dispose them in an environmentally safe and effective manner;
- Ensure that the seized chemicals are not reintroduced into the illicit drug production network within beneficiary countries;
- Free up storage space for future chemical seizures within beneficiary countries; and
- Reduce the chemicals’ negative environmental impact.
