San Francisco, CA – The United States Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution sponsored by Mayor London N. Breed to support urgent and increased federal enforcement and public health interventions to address the fentanyl crisis. The resolution was supported by a bi-partisan group of Mayors from across the country.
“Locally we are doing all we can to address the challenges of open-air drug dealing of fentanyl in our community,” said Mayor Breed. “Despite the strong and laudable efforts of our local law enforcement agencies, we know San Francisco—and cities across the United States—needs more support. The trafficking and dealing of fentanyl is a national crisis, and requires a robust response from the federal government.”
Specifically, the resolution calls on the Biden Administration to act immediately and increase its enforcement and prosecution of high-level fentanyl drug traffickers and dealers in communities throughout the country. Mayor Breed’s resolution states that it is imperative that the federal government increase its collaboration with local authorities to combat drug trafficking and dealing, and form joint investigations with local law enforcement to pursue these traffickers and dealers.
Relatedly, the resolution urges the Biden Administration to significantly increase its public communications that our neighborhoods and commercial areas must be drug-free and safe from any open-air drug markets, including online and social media sales of drugs to the general public.
The resolution further supports the Biden Administration in calling on Congress to permanently schedule all illicitly produced fentanyl-related substances into Schedule I and to take other complementary actions to enhance public health and public safety, consistent with the comprehensive proposal developed jointly in 2021 by the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The House of Representatives recently passed the HALT act, to permanently classify fentanyl as a Schedule I drug; the legislation is now on to the U.S. Senate.
Lastly, the resolution urges Congress and the Biden Administration, through legislation and regulatory measures, to increase access to a spectrum of public health interventions, including harm reduction services and substance use disorder treatment, and drug testing to improve surveillance of and response to a rapidly changing drug supply, including track-and-trace of biopharmaceuticals at risk of contamination.
This resolution builds upon Mayor Breed’s ongoing efforts to request support from state and federal partners. In the past year, Mayor Breed has met the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Department of Justice, including the new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. In these conversations she has requested the federal government’s support to arrest and prosecute drug dealers, and provide any other direct response and prevention strategies to put an end to the dangerous and deadly open-air drug dealing on our streets.
The resolution was adopted by a bi-partisan group of U.S. mayors at the USCM Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio:
Todd Gloria (San Diego, CA)
Darrell Steinberg (Sacramento, CA)
Matt Mahan (San Jose, CA)
Patricia Lock Dawson (Riverside, CA)
Karen K. Goh (Bakersfield, CA)
Farrah Khan (Irvine, CA)
Lily Mei (Fremont, CA)
Eric L. Adams (New York, NY)
Jim Kenney (Philadelphia, PA)
Ted Wheeler (Portland, OR)
Justin Bibb (Cleveland, OH)
Michael B. Hancock (Denver, CO)
Dean J. Trantalis (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Satya Rhodes-Conway (Madison, WI)
LaToya Cantrell (New Orleans, LA)
Malik Evans (Rochester, NY)
Bruce Harrell (Seattle, WA)
Tishaura O. Jones (St. Louis, MO)
Victoria Woodards (Tacoma, WA)
Muriel Bowser (Washington, D.C.)
Danene Sorace (Lancaster, PA)
Ron Nirenberg (San Antonio, TX)
Nadine Woodward (Spokane, WA)
The full resolution is available online: https://legacy.usmayors.org/resolutions/91st_Conference/proposed-review-list-full-print-committee-individual.asp?resid=a0F4N00000S4v5pUAB
About the United States Conference of Mayors
The United States Conference of Mayors is the official non-partisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are over 1,400 such cities in the country today. Each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor.
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