Review - HR 7552 Introduced – Fentanyl and CBWC

Back in February, Rep Moore (R,AL) introduced HR 7552, the CBW Fentanyl Act. The bill would make various revisions to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination (CBWCE) Act of 1991 to make the international distribution of fentanyl or its precursors by a country an act of chemical or biological warfare which would require the imposition of Presidential sanctions. No new funding is authorized by this bill. 

This bill is very similar to HR 8197, the Countering Beijing’s Weaponization of Fentanyl Act, that was introduced by Rep Banks (R,IN) in June of 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the 118th Congress. The major difference between the two bills is that the new version substitutes the phrase “an individual who is an official, employee, or agent of a foreign governmental entity” for the word ‘individual’ wherever the language talks about an individual committing a covered act. There are a few other word order and phrase order changes made in this new version of the bill. 

Moving Forward 

While Moore is not a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to which this bill was assigned for primary consideration, one of his two cosponsors {Rep Smith (R,NJ)} is a member. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see the bill considered by that Committee. While there are certainly a substantial number of Republicans that would back this bill purely as an anti-fentanyl measure, there will be a number that would object to formally conflating a dangerous street drug with chemical weapons. I do, however, suspect that there would be sufficient bipartisan support for this bill to pass in Committee were it to be considered. There would not be sufficient support to see the bill considered under the suspension of the rules process. 

For more information on the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-7552-introduced-fentanyl-and-cbwc - subscription required. 

 

An Early Update to the NTAS Bulletin

Earlier this week DHS updated the National Terrorism Advisory Systems (NTAS) bulletin. This has been a semi-annual activity since 2015. It has become a relatively unimportant news item because there has been little or no change in the wording of each successive bulletin; last May it did not even rate a full blog post here.

There is little change in this iteration, but there is a small change that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

“Some terrorist groups overseas are using battlefield experiences to pursue new technologies and tactics, such as unmanned aerial systems and chemical agents [emphasis added] that could be used outside the conflict zones. Additionally, terrorists continue to target commercial aviation and air cargo, including with concealed explosives.”

There have been a number of news articles over the last six months or so about the Isis use of UAS and chemical agents on the battlefield. It is not a great stretch to assume that such tools could be used in terrorist attacks. I would like to think, however, that DHS would not mention these attack options in this venue unless there were specific intelligence that Isis was attempting to move these technologies off the conventional battlefield and into the terrorist playbook. That may just be wishful thinking on my part.