Montana, along with Florida, Connecticut, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia... plus territory Guam... have joined together to take on Fentanyl.

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Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and the coalition of Attorneys General requested President Joe Biden to designate Fentanyl as a "Weapon of Mass Destruction". The Attorneys General demand our President take swift action in response to the record-breaking nationwide increase of overdose deaths related to the drug.

The requested action, involving the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Defense, would enable all three governmental departments to work together on the solution, rather than treating Fentanyl as a narcotics control issue.

From February 2021 to February 2022, more than 75,000 Americans died from overdosing on synthetic opioids (primarily Fentanyl). Right now across the United States, drug overdose is the number one cause of death in adults aged 18-45.

AG Knudsen had this to say:

Treating this solely as a narcotics control problem has failed to curb the proliferation of increasing quantities of chemicals that can cause a mass casualty event. Your own DEA Administrator has called fentanyl “the deadliest threat [the DEA] ha[s] ever seen.” We should treat it as such—thus bold action must be taken. We must not sit idly by until a terrorist chooses to inflict harm using this substance on a large group of Americans—our countrymen are already dying from this poison. We cannot wait for tragedy to strike when proactive steps can be taken now to preserve American lives. We urge you take immediate and decisive action and declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Fentanyl has many usages, beyond simply being a drug for users to intake. With the extreme lethality in relatively small quantities, open availability, and minimal production costs, a foreign or domestic terrorist could use this as a chemical weapon.

Here in Montana, AG Knudsen has increased MT DOJ narcotic and major case agents, added a statewide drug intelligence officer, and helped deploy two dozen drug-detecting K9s around the state.

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