President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday, December 16, 2025, designating the street drug known as fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. During an event in the Oval Office, he spoke on the threat the drug poses to American families and the number of deaths it has caused. He went as far as to compare it to the number of U.S. deaths from wars. 

Signed Executive Order

“The manufacture and distribution of fentanyl, primarily performed by organized criminal networks, threatens our national security and fuels lawlessness in our hemisphere and at our borders,” the order reads. “As President of the United States, my highest duty is the defense of the country and its citizens.  Accordingly, I hereby designate illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).”

Those who will be in charge of implementing the new executive order are the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, and the Attorney General. “The heads of relevant executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall take appropriate action to implement this order and eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States,” it states. 

Experts Evaluate Fentanyl Risk

Unsurprisingly, Trump dramatized the situation and the number of deaths from fentanyl each year. “Two to three hundred thousand people die every year, that we know of, so we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction,” he said. However, a quick fact check using the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that fentanyl deaths have dropped by 27 percent in recent years.

Experts weighed in on the subject and claim that fentanyl would be difficult to use as a weapon of mass destruction. They cited the only documented incident worldwide that occurred in 2002, over two decades ago. The Russian government utilized fentanyl in a gas form and weaponized it against the Chechen terrorists who were holding hostages in the Moscow Nord-Ost theater. Since then, no incidents have been reported. 

A study was conducted at the National Defense University by the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2019, foreshadowing that there is no evidence to support this executive order. “It is not evident that there is any basis or need for, or net benefit to, officially designating fentanyl compounds as weapons of mass destruction,” it concluded.

Drug Trafficking

Jeffrey Singer, a physician and expert on street drugs at the Cato Institute, explained that there is a disconnect between the number of deaths from fentanyl in the United States and the use of the drug as a weapon. “I don’t know how you can equate smugglers meeting market demand and selling something illegal to someone who wants to buy it as an act of war,” Singer said. People are dying from fentanyl overdoses, not because cartels are using it as a weapon of mass destruction. 

Multiple other drug policy experts claim this executive order will not cut the supply of drugs, specifically fentanyl, that are swarming the streets, and will not slow the overdose death rates. However, this executive order is supposedly part of something much bigger. The Trump Administration is attempting to make the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-running boats seem more necessary than they are. 

So far in 2025, the U.S. military has carried out at least 22 attacks on suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. More than 80 people have been killed in the process, and President Trump claims these strikes are increasing the safety of our country.

“Every boat that gets hit, we save 25,000 American lives, and when you view it that way, you don’t mind,” Trump said. The executive order on classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction is simply a ploy to rationalize the administration’s threats to Venezuela and other southern hemisphere countries.