Legislative Background on the Opioid Crisis
Recent Action in the Congress on the Federal Response
Congress began regulating opiates with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which restricted the legal status of opium. The current national framework for controlling and distributing opiates was created with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which was passed into law by the first Congress of President Richard Nixon’s first term. Recent congressional legislation has addressed the use of opiates in America in a variety of ways, by making it easier for patients to get prescription painkillers, increasing funding for the interdiction of illegal fentanyl at the border, and creating grants to defray the costs of public addiction treatment…
