President Joe Biden and Congress appear set to extend a Trump administration decision to impose harsher minimum sentences for people caught with the powerful opioid fentanyl, a step liberals argue would harken back to Bidens reputation as a leading drug warrior even as critical Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) pushes to make the change permanent.

The Biden administration, its leaders and economists, are faced with their first major test of criminal justice reform, Hilary Shelton, the director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, told reporters on Monday. If they choose to extend this Trump-era policy, it will increase mass incarceration, and the over-policing and incarceration of people of color, and will be a missed position on Bidens campaign promises.

At issue is the classification of fentanyl, a drug the Centers for Disease Control has highlighted as a key reason fatal opioid overdoses spiked to 88,000 in the 12-month period ending in August 2020, a 23% increase over the year before. The drug, which is more powerful than morphine and used legally as a pharmaceutical to treat patients in severe pain, had long been classified as Schedule II, making unauthorized use or manufacture illegal.

Starting in 2018, the Trump administration began an emergency classification of fentanyl and its analogs a wide selection of drugs with similar chemical structures as Schedule I drugs, meaning possession and distribution now carry harsher mandatory minimum sentences. Congress extended that classification in early 2020, and its set to expire in early May.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said the administration would support an extension, emphasizing the need to find an agreement to address legitimate concerns related to mandatory minimums and researcher access to these substances.

The Administration takes the May 6 deadline seriously and will work with Congress to seek a clean extension to prevent this important law enforcement tool from lapsing, the spokesperson said. (RealClearPolitics first reported the administrations position.)