By Darlene McCormick Sanchez
President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction during an award ceremony honoring 13 military service members with the Mexican Border Defense Medal.
With new medals honoring military border security efforts as a backdrop, Trump doubled down on his campaign to secure the southern border and stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.
The president said there is no doubt that U.S. adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States, in part because they want to kill Americans.
“They’re trying to drug-out our country,” Trump said of those responsible for the fentanyl crisis.
“You can look throughout history. Look at China when they were loaded up with drugs; they were suffering greatly, and others were able to take them over.”
“No bomb does what this is doing,” he said. “Two hundred thousand to 300,000 people die every year that we know of.”
Trump said there has been a 50 percent drop in the amount of fentanyl coming across the border, noting that China has been working with the United States to reduce smuggling, acting on fentanyl-related commitments made in trade agreements. However, most fentanyl precursor chemicals, which are used to produce the deadly drug, are produced in China.
As proof that progress is being made, Trump touted a May fentanyl bust in New Mexico as the largest in U.S. history, in which authorities seized nearly 3 million fentanyl pills.
The seizure, estimated to be worth billions of dollars, was part of a month-long investigation that resulted in the arrest of 16 individuals, cash, firearms, and luxury vehicles across multiple states.
The operation was considered a significant setback for the Sinaloa Cartel, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by Trump and recognized as one of the primary groups smuggling fentanyl across the U.S.–Mexico southern border.
Trump noted that in November, another 1.7 million fentanyl pills were seized in Colorado.
He emphasized that fentanyl continues to endanger American lives.
Trump said that fentanyl has legitimate medical uses but that it has been exploited by cartels in Mexico, where it is mixed with street drugs such as cocaine or fake pills, including fake Adderall.
The executive order states that fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic and that just 2 milligrams—the equivalent of 10 to 15 grains of table salt—is a lethal dose.
The order states that the production and sale of fentanyl by foreign terrorist organizations and cartels are linked to funding assassinations, terrorist acts, and insurgencies worldwide, and are described as undermining U.S. security.
“Further, the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries is a serious threat to the United States,” the order states.
It directs Cabinet secretaries and agencies to “eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States.”
Those measures include using the full force of the U.S. government to address the fentanyl crisis, with coordination among the secretaries of State, Treasury, War, and Homeland Security, as well as the U.S. attorney general’s office.
The order specifies that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem will coordinate with the heads of relevant agencies to use intelligence and identify threat networks related to fentanyl smuggling using weapons of mass destruction “to support the full spectrum of counter-fentanyl operations.”
Related posts:
Trump’s Border Czar Says Illegal Crossings Down 93 Percent
Trump Drafting Executive Order on Election Integrity After Alleging Ballot Fraud in California
Treasury Department Working to ‘Cut Off Federal Benefits to Illegal Aliens’
Oversight Committee Probes Alleged Cover-Up of Massive Minnesota Welfare Fraud
