President Donald Trump said he will classify fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” in his latest initiative to increase pressure on Latin America to combat drug trafficking.
“I am taking another step to protect Americans from the deadly fentanyl plague that is invading our country,” Trump said Monday during a White House event. “With this historic executive order that I will sign today, we are formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is exactly what it is.”
The Trump administration had already considered a similar designation in the president’s first term, and allies argue it would allow the Department of Homeland Security to access resources aimed at detecting and eliminating weapons of mass destruction. The text of Trump’s executive order was not immediately available.
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The measure comes as Trump has cited deaths from fentanyl to justify a series of attacks on vessels in international waters that, according to the Pentagon, were used for drug trafficking, part of a campaign that has as its main focus pressuring the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to leave power. Trump has vowed to expand strikes to land-based drug production targets.
“We’re going to start attacking on the ground, which is a lot easier to do, frankly, but these are a direct military threat to the United States of America,” Trump said.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, who attended the event, told Axios in October that the administration had been discussing the idea of classification as a weapon of mass destruction for at least six months. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican close to the White House, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require the Department of Homeland Security’s Office to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction to classify the drug under its responsibility.
The move comes as the president considers reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, which has boosted shares of companies in the cannabis sector.
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