YOUNGSTOWN — U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said a bipartisan bill with him as the lead sponsor to combat the fentanyl crisis should get a full Senate vote shortly.

Brown, D-Cleveland, said Thursday that the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act will move quickly in the Senate and then must start the process in the U.S. House.

While a similar bill hasn’t been introduced in the House, Brown said he was confident it eventually would pass there and become law.

The bill was unanimously approved June 26 by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of which Brown chairs. The bill has 63 co-sponsors, both Democratic and Republican.

“It’s about targeting the illicit fentanyl supply chain from the precursor chemical suppliers in China to the cartels that traffic the drug through Mexico,” Brown said.

It is a sanctions and anti-money laundering bill to help combat the fentanyl crisis by targeting traffickers.

The bill would declare that the international trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is a national emergency, requires the president to sanction transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels’ key members, enable the president to use proceeds of forfeited property of fentanyl traffickers to further law enforcement agencies and allow the Treasury Department to utilize special measures to combat fentanyl-related money laundering.

“The sooner we pass it the better we can attack these criminal organizations in Mexico and China,” Brown said.

Brown spoke about the bill during a Thursday news conference at the Youngstown Police Department. He was joined by Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene, Youngstown police Chief Carl Davis, Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and Brenda Heidinger, associate director of the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board.

Greene said fentanyl is “what truly is killing our loved ones and our people out in the community.”

Greene said he welcomes any legislation “that could potentially hamper the manufacturing and distribution of fentanyl in the Mahoning Valley.”

Davis said there has been a “staggering number of overdoses” in Youngstown, largely because of fentanyl. There were 486 reported overdoses in the city last year with 88 fatalities, he said.

“This is a devastating toll that highlights the urgency of the situation,” Davis said.

Fentanyl was present in 79 percent of the drug overdose deaths in Mahoning County last year and in 91 percent of them so far this year, Heidinger said.