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Donald Trump has signed an executive order classifying illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction as he pressures Latin America over alleged drug trafficking and weighs escalating US military action in the region.
The order could widen the Trump administration’s legal justification for escalating its military operations, including strikes on Venezuelan soil.
“We’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is. No bomb does what this is doing,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.
The president has used fentanyl overdose deaths, the leading cause of all US overdose deaths last year, as a driving reason for the US’s military campaign against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific.
The attacks have killed at least 87 people in 22 strikes. The Trump administration has argued that it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Trump on Monday repeated comments he has made in recent months that US land strikes would come soon.
“We’re going to start hitting them on land, which is a lot easier to do, frankly, but these are a direct military threat to the United States of America,” he said.
The US has amassed its largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which includes about a dozen warships — including its largest and newest aircraft carrier — a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, 14,000 troops and F-35 fighter jets. The build-up is widely seen as an effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power.
The Trump administration claims Maduro is the leader of the drug trafficking organisation Cartel de los Soles, which the US last month designated as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The US further increased pressure on Maduro last week by seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and sanctioning members of the president’s extended family.
Trump also said this month that he would consider striking Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking targets.
The president’s order on fentanyl states that the manufacturing and distribution of the drug “threatens our national security and fuels lawlessness in our hemisphere and at our borders”.
It also states that “illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic”.
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According to federal law, weapons of mass destruction could be destructive devices including explosives or weapons designed to cause death or serious injury with toxic or poisonous chemicals, have a biological or toxic agent, or are designed to release dangerous levels of radiation.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is the primary cause of drug overdose deaths in the US. In a medical setting, the drug can be used as an anaesthetic during surgery or prescribed for pain relief.
Trump’s order directs various federal entities, including the departments of justice and defence, to “take appropriate action” to “eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals” to the US.