[UPDATED] (Atlantic, Iowa) – Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds hosted a Fentanyl Roundtable in Atlantic, Tuesday morning at City Hall. She also signed HF 595, a bill which increases penalties for fentanyl manufacturers and dealers whose actions lead to serious injury or death.

Reynolds blamed President Biden for allowing the flow of drugs to proliferate in this country.

The bill she signed also holds accountable those who lace counterfeit pills with small but deadly doses, by lowering the threshold for when penalties kick-in.

Gov. Reynolds signs HF 595 at City Hall, in Atlantic (5-16-26) – (Chris Parks photo_

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and DPS Commissioner Stephan Bayens both spoke at the event in Atlantic. Bird said “Drug dealers who kill and poison will be punished,” under the bill.

Commission Bayens said “Stopping the flow of poison’s like fentanyl into our communities remains one of our highest law enforcement priorities.”

DPS Commissioner Stephen Bayens (Chris Parks photo)

He said both urban and rural areas of the State are reeling from the influx of fentanyl coming into the State.

He said an award-winning example of the collaborative law enforcement strategies can be found in the recent federal indictments of six Iowans after a series of overdoses in Cass and Shelby Counties.

Bayens said “it took months of diligence and hard work from 12 different criminal justice agencies, but the efforts paid-off in June of last year, when a Grand Jury handed down six federal indictments All six plead guilty to their charges. A number of those defendants are being sentenced in the Council Bluffs Federal Courthouse. They are accused of distributing over 10-thousand fentanyl pills in southwest Iowa.

From Atlantic, the Governor moved on to Van Meter where she stopped at the I-80 eastbound Weigh Station, and signed SF 513, a bill for an act relating to motor vehicle enforcement duties of the department of public safety and the department of transportation, providing transfers of moneys, and including effective date provisions.