WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution offered by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and a bipartisan group of four other senators aimed at raising awareness of the devastating role played by illicit fentanyl as part of the country’s heroin and opioid overdose epidemic.

The resolution, approved Wednesday, provides that it is the responsibility of the governments of the United States, China and Mexico to stop both the production and trafficking of illicit fentanyl, which can be 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin, into the U.S.

“The scourge of opioid abuse is a public health crisis that has not spared any area of Pennsylvania,” Toomey said. “While there is no silver bullet on how we can fix this problem, we need to up our efforts to keep dangerous substances, like illicit fentanyl, out of the United States by cutting off production at the source.”

Toomey notes that the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a nationwide alert on illicit fentanyl as a threat to public health and safety — the DEA says nearly all of the raw fentanyl and its precursor chemicals are being manufactured in China or Mexico and then shipped surreptitiously into the U.S.

In 2016, Toomey authored the Blocking Deadly Fentanyl Imports Act, which requires the State Department to identify in its annual report on narcotics trafficking those countries that are major producers of illicit fentanyl.

Fentanyl-producing nations, like China, that fail to adopt U.S. standards on narcotics control would lose access to the Export-Import Bank and be ineligible for other U.S. taxpayer-subsidized aid under the act.