We cannot say we are protecting our children until we face this fact and pass legislation to stop it.”

Brigette Norring, founder of the Devin J. Norring Foundation

On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the US Senate held a Judiciary Committee to hear about H.R. 27 Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act or simply the HALT Fentanyl Act. Among those speaking at the meeting was Hastings’ own Brigette Norring, founder of the Devin J. Norring Foundation.
The bill places “fentanyl-related substances as a class,” into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, according to the bill. Schedule 1 controlled substances are drugs that have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical value and subject to regulatory controls as well as administrative, civil, and criminal penalties.
This would automatically have offenses involving 100 grams or more of fentanyl to trigger 10-year mandatory sentences in prison.
Fentanyl is currently a schedule II narcotic alongside cocaine, methamphetamine, oxycodone, and Adderall. Examples of schedule I drugs include Heroin, marijuana (cannabis) and peyote.
The term fentanyl-related substances (FRS) is one that has stymied regulators attempting to get a handle on the drug. Dr. Timothy Westlake described them at the meeting as “highly-active opioids almost identical to fentanyl except for a tiny difference in their chemical structure created by changing a single ingredient in synthesis. The result of this tweak is a new potent opioid with the same deadly effects as fentanyl and without class scheduling would be legal until it caused multiple deaths.”
Minnesota’s scheduled drugs list nearly 50 different FRSs for this very reason.
According to Westlake, scheduling FRSs will not only make them easier to prosecute and mandate longer sentences but will work to stop their creation outright: “The fact is you can’t die from ingesting something that was never created, nor can you be incarcerated for trafficking something that does not exist. That’s the beauty and simplicity of FRS scheduling.”
Vice President of Homeland Security Donald Barnes spoke at the hearing on behalf of the Major County Sheriffs of America, comparing FRSs to the different types of methamphetamines that proliferated in the 1990s: “We saw this happen to methamphetamines in the 90s where there were analog knockoffs, and it makes it very difficult to prosecution.”
While scheduling FRSs is an important step in the path forward for fentanyl, the sale of illegal drugs online was another focus of the meeting. The Cooper Davis and Devin Norring Act, a parallel bill to the HALT Fentanyl Act that was introduced by Rep. Angie Craig in July 2024, is designed to hold social media platforms accountable to the sale of fentanyl on their platforms. It was introduced to the House of Representatives the same day that Rep. Craig and Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke alongside Norring at Hastings High School.
“It is critical that we address social media platforms that facilitate drug peddling to children: platforms that make these connections as a matter of design and then profit from them. We cannot say we are protecting our children until we face this fact and pass legislation to stop it,” said Norring.
Norring spoke to how if a brick-and-mortar store sold drugs the way they are being sold on social media platforms, it would be immediately shut down. “So I ask, why do the same rules not apply to social media?” said Norring.
That distinction between the standard for physical stores or products and social media platforms was one repeated throughout the meeting.
“If we saw this with any other product, there would be federal law shutting down these products to make them safe before they could go to market,” said Sen. Ashley Moody comparing the relatively quick halt of faulty automobile parts to the ongoing issues of liability for social media platforms in general and Snapchat in specific.
Snapchat was the platform used by Devin Norring to buy the pill that killed him.
Social media companies are largely shielded from liability for the content on their platforms including the sale of drugs which stops any incentive for change, according to Norring.
“Until this body takes that action, I just have to say, almost nothing else we do is really serious. You can try to fine them, they don’t care. You can change the rules on reporting, they’ll evade it. You can slap them on the wrist, and they won’t do anything. Until plaintiffs get into court, nothing will change,” said Sen. Josh Hawley.
Dakota County continues to grapple with high rates of opioid overdoses and deaths, even as national trends have decreased since the pandemic. According to Dakota County’s Opioid Settlement Annual meeting in November 2024, despite national trends for drug overdoses dropping from May 2023 to May 2024 by 12.7%, that figure isn’t necessarily reflected closer to home.
Across Minnesota, the number of resident deaths related to opioids in 2022-2023 dropped by 2.9% from 1,031 to 1,001. At the same time, in Dakota County the number of fatal opioid overdoses increased by 6.25% from 45 deaths to 48, with non-fatal overdoses increasing 4.2% from 299 to 312 according to data shared at that meeting.