Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he is classifying the deadly drug fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” rightly taking action to address the dangerous threat introduced to American soil by traffickers and cartel members.
“If this were a war, [it’d] be one of the worst wars,” President Trump said during a special ceremony in the Oval Office.
He said he believed that hundreds of thousands of Americans had perished because of exposure to fentanyl every year.
For reference, just two milligrams of fentanyl are often deadly, and just one kilogram of the deadly drug is enough to kill 500,000 people, according to the DEA.
“Today I’m taking one more step to protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl flooding into our country,” President Trump said. “With this historic executive order I will sign today, we are formally classifying fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, which is what it is. No bomb does what this is doing.”
The president’s announcement came during a White House ceremony honoring 13 servicemembers in a special Mexican Border Defense medal presentation.
Via President Trump’s official executive order:
“The manufacture and distribution of fentanyl, primarily performed by organized criminal networks, threatens our national security and fuels lawlessness in our hemisphere and at our borders. The production and sale of fentanyl by Foreign Terrorist Organizations and cartels fund these entities’ operations — which include assassinations, terrorist acts, and insurgencies around the world — and allow these entities to erode our domestic security and the well-being of our Nation.”
This further heightens the president’s war against the drug cartels, as the U.S. military continues to strike alleged Venezuelan drug boats, and even recently seized a Venezuelan oil tanker just off the coast of Nicolas Maduro’s country.
The EO signed on Monday gives the U.S. Attorney General a specific directive to pursue investigations and prosecutions related to fentanyl trafficking. It also empowers other secretaries in the president’s cabinet to utilize their authorities through appropriate agency channels to ensure fentanyl distribution and trafficking are halted or penalized.