Gabe Evans

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today in strong support of my bill to help combat the epidemic of fentanyl deaths that have been driven by the proliferation of counterfeit pills. My bill, the Stop Pills That Kill Act, is commonsense legislation that will help save American lives by cracking down on criminals who traffic poison disguised as prescription drugs. Under Republican leadership, the United States has thankfully seen a steep decline in monthly synthetic opioid deaths, driven by policies that strengthen border security and target cartels and drug dealers. Unfortunately, my State of Colorado has seen the exact opposite trend, with an average overdose rate of about 800 deaths per month at the end of 2024 increasing to 1,000 deaths now. Because Colorado's trends have not matched the Nation and have, in fact, gone the other direction, my State has, unfortunately, seen more than 1,600 tragic and preventable excess overdose deaths. I was a cop in the Denver area for over a decade. I know that this figure isn't just a tragic coincidence. It is a direct result of failed policies. While I was working to keep communities in Colorado safe from the poison that is fentanyl, Denver Democrats chose repeatedly to push soft-on-crime policies that lessened criminal sentencing for drug offenses while refusing to take a hard line on fentanyl. The Stop Pills That Kill Act counteracts these deadly policies by doing three simple things: It closes a sentencing loophole that allows poison peddlers off with a slap on the wrist. It implements serialization requirements for pill presses and their critical components. And it makes it illegal to manufacture, distribute, or import pill presses with the intent to illicitly produce a controlled substance. I will remind my colleagues that every 15 days under the previous administration we lost the same number of Americans to drug overdose deaths that we lost in the entirety of the September 11 terrorist attacks. I was a cop for 10 years, and I was a soldier for 12. I deployed to a combat zone as part of the global war on terror, and that statistic speaks volumes. We must remember the impacts that fentanyl has had on hundreds of thousands of American families. During the legislative process, two bills were folded into mine, the Fight Illicit Pill Presses Act, led by Representative Hageman, and the PRESS Act led by Representative McDowell. I thank both of them for their work, but I want to particularly recognize my friend, Mr. McDowell, who tragically lost his own brother to fentanyl nearly 10 years ago. Representative McDowell's dedication to fighting this crisis is a fitting honor to his brother's legacy. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this critically important, commonsense bill.