Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Tuesday he wants $1 billion in the fiscal year 2024 federal budget to go to the Department of Homeland Security to fight the smuggling of the deadly drug fentanyl from Mexico.
"As we return to regular order in our appropriations process, I hope this serves as a starting point for a substantive debate on how best to stem the flow of fentanyl," Roll Call reported Murphy saying Tuesday.
A spokesperson from Murphy's office told the news outlet the money "would help build upon the bipartisan success we achieved in last year's spending package."
According to the report, half of the money would fund more vehicle inspections by border officers and increase their ability to seize illegal profits leaving the United States from selling the drug.
The proposal would also create permanent outbound inspection points at the six official ports of entry to seize cash, guns, and "other profits" by "transnational" criminal organizations.
The Council on Foreign Relations labeled fentanyl and other opioids as "the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States" in a report two weeks ago.
According to that report, more than 1,500 people die each week from opioid overdoses, including fentanyl which is 50 times more potent than heroin, and has become the leading cause of overdose death in the country.
During a Senate hearing in February, Murphy said Mexico was "not taking this crisis seriously enough."
"At worst, the Mexican government, or parts of it, are looking the other way, or are complicit with cartels," Murphy said during the hearing. "A vast majority of [the drugs coming] to the United States through the southern border are coming through the ports."
In March, Murphy visited Mexico with a bipartisan delegation to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to discuss the illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons.
"Reducing the amount of deadly fentanyl that is getting into the United States has to be a higher priority in our relationship with Mexico," Murphy wrote in a statement at the time of the visit.
Dr. Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University said in a press release from Murphy about the visit, that fentanyl only costs about 1% of what a similar dose of heroin costs to make, making it a much more profitable venture for the cartels.
"It's just like any other industry, if you got a chance to do something that costs only 1% as much as it used to, you're going to shift to that," he said in the release. "It's really hard to stop people from producing things that can make them lots and lots of money."