The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed this Monday (12/15/2025) an executive order to declare fentanyl, a powerful opioid that has caused a health crisis in recent years, “as a weapon of mass destruction”. “No bomb does the damage that this does: As far as we know, between 200,000 and 300,000 people die every year,” Trump said during an event in the Oval Office.
“Today I’m taking another step to protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl sweeping our country. With this historic executive order that I will sign today, we will officially classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which it truly is,” Trump said. “If this were a war, it would be one of the worst wars,” said the US president.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 250,000 people died from overdoses related to synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, between 2021 and 2023 alone. According to official figures, at least 48,000 people in the USA died from using this drug in 2024.
Reducing drug income
Trump announced the order’s signing at an event honoring service members for their work defending the border with Mexico. The president said: “There is no doubt that America’s adversaries are smuggling fentanyl into the United States, in part because they want to kill Americans.” The Republican assured that “a 50 percent reduction in the amount of fentanyl crossing the border” had been achieved during his term in office.
The order’s language ensures that “illegal fentanyl is more similar to a chemical weapon than a narcotic” and that its production and sale “by foreign terrorist organizations and cartels finances those organizations’ operations – which include assassinations, terrorist attacks and insurgencies around the world – and enables them to undermine our national security and the well-being of our nation.”
The order directs several Cabinet secretaries to step up the fight against trafficking of this opioid and specifically states that “the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, will update all policies related to the armed forces’ response to chemical spills within the country to include the threat of illicit fentanyl.”
DZC (EFE, AFP)
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