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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday making it a crime in Florida for someone to knowingly expose law enforcement and first responders to fentanyl.
He warned violators that he would “throw the book” at them if they lie to agents about whether fentanyl is present when responding to a call and blamed President Joe Biden for his “unwillingness to secure the border” by exacerbating the opioid crisis.
“When you put fentanyl in our communities, you’re killing people,” DeSantis said during a press conference Monday. “And you need to be treated like the killer you are.”
The dangerous narcotic has been used nefariously in recent years by traffickers who mix other drugs with the deadly substance. There have been thousands of accidental overdoses and deaths as a result of the fentanyl epidemic, especially as the crisis at the southern border persists.
Fentanyl, unlike many other dangerous narcotics, does not need to be ingested to be dangerous and can enter the body in harmful amounts even through involuntary inhalation of the powdered substance or, in rare cases, through skin contact.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday making it a felony to expose first responders to fentanyl or other dangerous narcotics.
Along with the massive flow of illegal immigration across the southern border, drug trafficking has also reached unprecedented levels and fentanyl is killing record numbers of Americans.
One story DeSantis often cites is when a toddler died after crawling across the floor of an AirBnB and coming into contact with fentanyl residue on the carpet. He told the tragic story during the bill signing on Monday.
“This is disgusting stuff and there are situations where law enforcement personnel are responding to these situations where fentanyl could be involved,” the Florida Governor said. “They’re really putting themselves at risk, because it’s not like they have to start taking pills to be affected by this.”
In addition to the flow of crossings at the southern border and the mass of illegal immigrants living in the country as a result of the immigration crisis, drugs have also been flowing at record speeds into the United States through Mexico.
DeSantis is one of the country’s staunchest anti-illegal immigration governors and is helping lead efforts to send assistance to the southern border and also implement laws in his state to address the crisis.
For example, Florida is leading and joining some lawsuits against the Biden administration over its so-called ‘parole’ program that brings in 30,000 undocumented immigrants each month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela and releases them into the country without legal status.
The brunt of the burden of parole flights is being felt in Florida, where the Biden administration has conducted more than 300,000 flights in the past year.
To further address how the immigration crisis is affecting Florida’s drug problem, Governor DeSantis on Monday signed the bill making it a felony to expose first responders to fentanyl or other analogue drugs such as Vicodin, oxycontin or Percocet.
‘This account, [SB] 718, states that any adult who, through unlawful possession of dangerous fentanyl or analogues, exposes any first responder to that fentanyl resulting in an overdose or serious bodily injury, we will prosecute them as a second-degree felon for doing that,’ DeSantis said in a news conference Monday upon signing the law.
‘So if an officer says, ‘Do you have drugs in your possession?’ and you lie and then the officer ends up exposed and hurt, we are going to throw the book at you and we are going to hold you responsible,” he added.
“We want to make sure that the people who wear the uniform are protected.”
Analog drugs refer to those that are chemically similar to illegal narcotics but are available with a valid and legal prescription.