President Donald Trump has taken another step in his militarized anti-drug policies, giving a major narcotic a label usually reserved for deadly threats such as nuclear bombs or chemical weapons. While it is unclear whether the president’s latest executive order will have any short-term practical legal impact, it represents a new escalation in the Republican-led “war on drugs.”
Trump presents fentanyl as a national security threat
President Trump issued an executive order on Monday, “designating fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.” The president’s order argues, “Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic,” noting the lethality of the drug. The order also frames illicit fentanyl production and distribution as a national security threat, tying the drug to “Foreign Terrorist Organizations and cartels.” The order also claims “the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries is a serious threat to the United States.”
Based on these claims, the order tasks the U.S. Attorney General to “immediately pursue investigations and prosecutions into fentanyl trafficking, including through criminal charges as appropriate, sentencing enhancements, and sentencing variances.” The order also tasks other cabinet officials, including the Secretaries of Homeland Security, State, Treasury and War, to engage in various efforts against organizations and other actors involved in making or distributing fentanyl. Trump spoke about the order and the “scourge of deadly fentanyl.” He said, “No bomb does what this is doing — 200,000 to 300,000 people die every year, that we know of,” Trump claimed, though official statistics place annual U.S. deaths from fentanyl overdoses closer to 73,000 per year.
Potential political impact of the executive order
The executive order will likely not have a significant impact on the tools available to U.S. authorities concerning fentanyl. National security expert Dennis Fitzpatrick told CNN, “We already have statutes on the books that are tested, that prosecutors and agents are accustomed to working with, and they’re very clear, and they accomplish the same goals.” Fitzpatrick argued, “There’s no practical reason to label fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. It’s a political exercise,” and even held that the changes might make it “more difficult” to use preexisting laws to fight drug trafficking for agents and prosecutors to work under existing drug-trafficking statutes.
While the weapon of mass destruction executive order may not have much practical impact in the short run, it marks another escalation of the type of militarized verbiage on drugs that conservatives have used for decades. Conservatives such as Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan made extensive use of “War on Drugs” rhetoric and implemented policies that contributed to mass incarceration, with centrist Democratic presidents like Bill Clinton also contributing to these policies. Trump has taken an even more aggressively militaristic approach to fighting drugs, including controversial and possibly illegal strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats.
Trump’s continued use of national security language for law enforcement policies shows a concerted effort to continue to militarize policing in the United States. The new executive order giving fentanyl a weapons of mass destruction designation seems likely to promote that goal, raising concerns about the expansion of state power and fears that vulnerable people will again be the targets of such government force.