WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States needs an agile, multi-pronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to address its festering overdose epidemic, advises a bipartisan congressional committee.

With super-potent synthetic drugs like fentanyl leading to record overdose deaths, the opioid scourge awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, a change that public health experts expect in the coming months.

“This is one of our most pressing national security, law enforcement and public health challenges, and we must do more as a nation and government to protect our most precious resource. – American lives,” the Synthetic Opioids Anti-Trafficking Commission said in a statement. 70-page report delivered Tuesday to Congress, President Joe Biden and the American people.

The report envisages a dynamic strategy. It would rely on law enforcement and diplomacy to shut down sources of chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. It would offer treatment and support to people who become addicted, creating pathways that can lead them back to productive lives. And it would invest in research to better understand the grip of addiction on the human brain and to develop treatments for opioid use disorders.

The global coronavirus pandemic has overshadowed the US opioid epidemic for the past two years, but recent news that overdose deaths have topped 100,000 in a year has caught the public’s attention. Politically, federal legislation aimed at solving the opioid crisis has won the support of all supporters under the Obama and Trump administrations.

Rep. David Trone, D-Md., co-chair of the group that produced the report, said he thinks the support is still there and the issue appeals to Biden’s pragmatic side. “The president has been crystal clear,” Trone said. “These are two major issues in America: addiction and mental health.”

The US government’s record is also clear. He is waging a “war on drugs” that has been lost for decades.

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The stakes are much higher now with the widespread availability of fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine. It can be baked into illicit pills designed to look like prescription painkillers or anti-anxiety medications. Chemical raw materials are produced mainly in China. Criminal networks in Mexico control production and shipment to the United States

The federal drug strategy has traditionally focused on law enforcement and long prison sentences. But it came to be viewed as racially biased and counterproductive because drug use is treatable. The value of treatment has recently been recognized with widely used anti-addiction drugs alongside older strategies such as support groups.

The report endorsed both law enforcement and treatment, working in sync with each other.

“Through its work, the commission has come to recognize the impossibility of reducing the availability of illegal synthetic opioids through supply-side efforts alone,” the report states.

“Real progress can only come by pairing the disruption in the supply of illicit synthetic opioids with the decrease in US domestic demand for these drugs,” he added.

The report recommends what it calls five “pillars” for government action:

– Elevate the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to act as the nerve center of broad federal efforts and restore Cabinet rank to its Director.

— disrupt the drug supply through better coordinated law enforcement action.

— Reducing the demand for illicit drugs through treatment and through efforts to mitigate harm to addicts. Treatment programs should follow science-based “best practices”.

— Use diplomacy to enlist the help of other governments to cut off the supply of chemicals that criminal networks use to manufacture fentanyl.

— Develop monitoring and data analysis tools to spot new trends in illicit drug use before they become major problems for society.

Trone said it would take the cooperation of both political parties. “We have to take this toxic atmosphere in Washington and move past it,” he said. “Because 100,000 people are husbands, sisters, mothers, fathers. As a country, we are better than that.”