President Trump on Monday signed an executive order designating the street drug fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.
"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 order declared.
During an event in the Oval Office, Trump said the carnage fentanyl has caused in American families is worse than U.S. deaths in many wars.
"Two to three hundred thousand people die every year, that we know of, so we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction," Trump said.
In fact, Trump's numbers are wildly inflated. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl killed roughly 48 thousand people in the U-S last year - a 27 percent drop from the year before.
Experts also say fentanyl would be difficult to use as a weapon of mass destruction. There is only one documented incident worldwide, in 2002, where the Russian government weaponized fentanyl in gas form. There have been no cases reported in the U.S.
"It is not evident that there is any basis or need for, or net benefit to, officially designating fentanyl compounds as weapons of mass destruction," concluded a 2019 report by the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University.
Jeffrey Singer, a physician and an expert on street drugs at the Cato Institute, said people are dying from fentanyl in the U.S. because of widespread opioid addiction, not because cartels are deliberately weaponizing the drug.
"I don't know how you can equate smugglers meeting market demand and selling something illegal to someone who wants to buy it as an act of war," Singer said.
Most drug policy experts also say designating fentanyl as a WMD isn't likely to cut the supply of drugs on American streets or slow US overdose deaths.
But this executive order comes as part of a wider militarization of the US war against street drugs that includes military strikes on alleged drug-running boats and reclassifying cartels as terrorist organizations.
The U.S. military has carried out at least 22 attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific near Venezuela so far this year, leaving more than 80 people dead, according to an analysis by NPR. During a speech last week in Pennsylvania, President Trump said the strikes are making Americans safer.
"Every boat that gets hit, we save 25,000 American lives and when you view it that way, you don't mind," Trump said.
But most experts on criminal cartels and deadly street drugs say military strikes on speedboats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific will also have little or no impact on overdose deaths in the United States.
"Killing a drug mule has minimal effect on the flow of drugs, or the systems of criminal organizations," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drug trafficking and addiction at the Brookings Institution.
According to Felbab-Brown, the street drug fentanyl, which accounts for the vast majority of U.S. drug deaths, isn't produced in Venezuela, or smuggled in boats being targeted.
"Whatever actions are taken in the Caribbean have no effect on fentanyl," she said. Cartels operating in the Caribbean region are heavily involved in cocaine trafficking, Felbab-Brown said, but much of that illegal product goes to countries other than the United States.
Others shared the view that the military strikes are likely to be ineffective and could even be counter-productive.
"All we're doing is making the cartels come up with more potent and powerful forms of drugs to smuggle," said Singer, at the Cato Institute.
His fear is that more cartels will shift drug production away from cocaine - a risky but far less lethal street drug – and will pivot to dealing deadlier synthetic substances such as fentanyl, methamphetamines and nitazenes that can be produced and smuggled more easily.
"The added risk makes it necessary for them to do that," Singer said.
The Trump administration's national security strategy, released last month, elevated the fight against "narco-terrorists" to a key Defense Department priority, calling for "the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy."
But many critics say the deadly strikes are based on unverified, false, or wildly exaggerated claims. Last month, for example, Trump justified the use of military force against alleged traffickers by saying "300 million people died last year from drugs, that's what's illegal."
In fact, overall drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have been dropping since at least 2023 and accounted for about 76,000 fatalities in a 12-month period according to the latest provisional data from the CDC.
Cocaine, the drug predominately trafficked through the Caribbean, accounted for roughly 22,000 U.S. deaths in 2024, according to the latest provisional CDC data, a sharp decline from the year before.
Felbab-Brown and Singer also believe any deterrent effect of a "get tough" approach by the U.S. military will be lost because of what they view as Trump's pattern of freeing and pardoning high-level drug traffickers, gang leaders, and corrupt officials linked to the cartels.
"Actions such as pardoning the former president of Honduras leads to the question, what is the point of the policy?" said Felbab-Brown.
Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted in federal court last year in New York on drug trafficking and weapons charges. Trump's decision to free him drew a sharp rebuke from Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who called the move "shocking."
"He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever been subject to a conviction in U.S. courts, and less than one year into his sentence, President Trump is pardoning him, suggesting that President Trump cares nothing about narcotrafficking," Kaine said on CBS' Face the Nation.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has also pardoned the former leader of a drug gang called the Gangster Disciples and the creator of a criminal website called Silk Road used to traffic deadly drugs. His administration also returned key MS-13 drug gang informants to El Salvador.
During his first term, Trump also freed a high-level Mexican military official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda from U.S. custody and dropped all criminal charges, despite evidence of his close ties to what was then one of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels.
"I find it really difficult to understand. There is no steady principled focus on counter-narcotics policy," said Felbab-Brown.
Asked by Politico about the decision to pardon the former Honduran president, despite evidence he aided violent drug traffickers, Trump suggested without providing evidence that Hernández's prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department was politically motivated.
"There are many people fighting for Honduras, very good people that I know, and they think he was treated horribly, and they asked me to do it, and I said I'll do it," Trump said.
The Trump administration's militarized approach to drug interdiction does have support from some conservative drug policy experts.
"We now need drastic action," said Andrés Martínez-Fernández at the Heritage Foundation.
He acknowledged drug deaths have ebbed from record levels, but said Trump's decision to designate cartels as terrorist organizations was long overdue.
"Military action and these designations, beyond them being appropriate, are really necessary to confront these threats," Martínez-Fernández told NPR.
Martínez-Fernández said concern over Trump's repeated pardons of high-level drug gang leaders is "fair, to a degree," but he believes the use of targeted pardons along with military and diplomatic pressure may leverage better cooperation against the drug cartels from governments in the Western Hemisphere.
Felbab-Brown, at Brookings, said she too believes Trump's approach to the drug war has pressured some foreign leaders, including Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, to take more aggressive action against the cartels.
"The threat of tariffs as well as the designation of the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations created significant pressure on the Sheinbaum administration to push ahead on counter-narcotics cooperation," Felbab-Brown said, but added that the overall impact on drug trafficking will be minimal.
In an email to NPR last week, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly disputed the idea that military strikes are ineffective at disrupting the flow of drugs into the U.S.
"The President is right – any boat bringing deadly poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more," Kelly said.
During a cabinet meeting with Trump earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi argued that seizures of illegal drugs by federal agents during the first hundred days of Trump's second term had already "saved, are you ready for this media, 258 million American lives."
Drug policy researchers interviewed by NPR described that assertion by Bondi as wildly exaggerated.
Trump administration officials, however, say they're convinced the militarization of the drug war will eventually lead to fewer drug deaths.
"Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military," Vice President JD Vance said in a post on social media.
Copyright 2025 NPR
