President Donald Trump said Monday that he plans to classify the deadly drug fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” a step he said would escalate his administration’s campaign against drug smuggling.
“There’s no doubt that America’s adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States in part because they want to kill Americans. If this were a war, that would be one of the worst wars,” Trump said in the Oval Office while presenting medals to U.S. troops who have patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump compared illicit fentanyl smuggling, which has killed nearly 330,000 Americans over a five-year period ending in April, to the opium imports that devastated China in the 19th century and led to the Opium Wars after Beijing unsuccessfully tried to halt the trade.
“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. And other countries also, they’re trying to drug out our country,” Trump said.
The president did not immediately specify what the classification would entail, though such a designation could result in stiffer criminal penalties for alleged traffickers.
Trump noted that fentanyl is lethal in extremely small doses and is often smuggled across the Mexican border or through international mail and shipping systems, while also acknowledging that the drug has legitimate medical uses.
In October, Trump met with Xi Jinping, who agreed that China, the primary source of illegal fentanyl, would work to limit trafficking. Xi previously made similar commitments to Trump during his first term and to Joe Biden.
