US President Donald Trump has signed a new Executive Order formally designating illicit fentanyl and its key precursor chemicals as weapons of mass destruction, dramatically escalating the federal government’s response to the deadly drug trade.
Under the order, the Attorney General is instructed to immediately pursue tougher criminal charges and seek harsher penalties in fentanyl trafficking cases. The move is designed to strengthen prosecutions and allow courts to impose longer sentences on those involved in the manufacture, distribution and sale of the drug.
The Executive Order also directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury to take action against assets, financial networks and institutions linked to fentanyl production and trafficking, targeting the financial lifelines of criminal and transnational networks.
In a further step, the Secretary of War and the Attorney General have been tasked with assessing whether additional national security resources should be deployed to support the Department of Justice during emergencies involving weapons of mass destruction. The Secretary of War, working with the Secretary of Homeland Security, has also been ordered to update chemical incident response plans to explicitly include the fentanyl threat.
Homeland Security agencies will meanwhile be required to identify and disrupt fentanyl smuggling networks using intelligence typically reserved for weapons of mass destruction and non-proliferation threats.
The White House said the decision reflects the scale of harm caused by fentanyl, which has become the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. Officials argue the drug’s extreme potency — with as little as two milligrams considered potentially fatal — places it closer to a chemical weapon than a conventional narcotic.
The administration has also warned that profits from fentanyl trafficking are being used by cartels and foreign terrorist-linked organisations to finance violence, assassinations and insurgent activity, while cautioning that the drug could be exploited for large-scale terror attacks.
By classifying illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, the President said the federal government would be able to deploy a fully coordinated national security response to confront what it describes as a chemical threat to public safety.
The order builds on earlier actions taken by President Trump, including declaring a national emergency at the southern border, designating several major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, imposing tariffs linked to cross-border drug flows, authorising military operations against narco-trafficking networks, and signing the HALT Fentanyl Act, which permanently placed fentanyl-related substances in the most restrictive drug category under US law.
The White House said the latest move signals a renewed commitment to dismantling cartels, cutting off drug supply chains and protecting American families from what it calls one of the deadliest threats facing the nation.
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