Necessary measure or meaningless communication show? This question concerns the scientific community and the families of the victims of the deadly synthetic fentanyl, which a few days ago he declared a “weapon of mass destruction”. And this is not only because the specific decision has not yet been clarified how it will be implemented, but also because the results of the White House’s aggressive approach are far from guaranteed.
“No bomb does what it does [σ.σ. η φαιντανύλη]: 200,000 to 300,000 people die every year,” Trump said last Monday, signing the executive order that includes this drug as a “weapons of mass destruction.”
the actual numbers are different since according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the total number of drug overdose deaths in the US in 2024 was in the order of 80,000, of which more than 48,000 were attributed to synthetic opioids and 88% of them (about 42,250) involved fentanyl. The statistics show a 35.6% decrease from 2023, when 76,282 fentanyl deaths were recorded.
Existing problem
The specific initiative, however, comes to answer an existing problem, since in the three years 2021-2023 the losses related to fentanyl marked a real explosion, “breaking the barrier” of 70,000 deaths per year. After all, Trump’s executive order has been preceded by similar legislative initiatives at the state level, with 31 of the 50 US states equating the administration of a lethal dose with the crime of murder.
“These are no longer ‘street drugs.’ It’s poison,” said John Tavolaci, CEO of the Odyssey House addiction center in New York in 2023, sounding the alarm about fentanyl and its more lethal effects than other narcotics. Fifty times stronger than heroin and eighty times stronger than morphine, fentanyl was originally developed as a pain reliever, but is now characterized as a powerful synthetic opioid that has already “flooded” the hard drug market in the US.
It is worth noting that the measure has been under consideration since Trump’s first term, but there were objections to its effectiveness in the presidential staff itself and in agencies such as the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD), which in 2019 through its research expressed objections.
Since then, a number of relatives of the victims and activists in favor of tougher anti-drug policies began to put intense pressure on the White House. It is indicative that in September 2024 the Homeland Security adviser of then President Joe Biden, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, had called fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” at the World Summit on Countering Synthetic Drugs.
Doubts and consequences
It is not the first time that a US president has declared a “war on drugs”, as this rhetoric was first promoted in 1971 by Richard Nixon who described drug use as America’s “number one public enemy”. However, if the decision of the current president is not a lightning bolt, how it is going to be implemented raises questions.
As Vanda Felbab Brown, a researcher at the Brookings Institution specializing in the drug trade and the opioid epidemic affecting the US, points out, the concept of a weapon of mass destruction is defined through specific conditions that demonstrate the element of intent.
“The designation of fentanyl as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ makes its illegal trafficking, perhaps even its use, significantly more criminal. It reinforces the Trump administration’s broader anti-drug policy, which focuses on maximum force military measures while limiting access to addiction treatment,” she said in an article.
The fact that a narcotic substance is categorized as a weapon of mass destruction creates ambiguity as to the legal status.
It is recalled that from the beginning of September until today, 104 people have been killed in 28 attacks by the US armed forces on boats off the coast of Venezuela. Washington accuses the country’s President Nicolas Maduro of drug trafficking, although experts point out that Venezuela is not among the main sources of drugs entering the US and does not produce fentanyl there.
And they add – emphasizing the political motivation – that the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted of drug trafficking and trafficking, was released after being pardoned by Trump himself.
“There is a demand for this particular drug. So the problem is addiction,” Jeffrey Singer, a narcotics physician and fellow at the Cato Institute, told NPR. And he adds: “I don’t know how you can equate an act of war with smugglers meeting the demand for an illegal product by selling it to drug addicts.”
This approach is the opposite of government practice, which last April was “quantified” by Attorney General Pam Bondi, when she claimed that drug seizures had saved the lives of 258 million Americans.
