President Trump Takes a Much Needed Step on Fentanyl

For years the threat that fentanyl poses to US security and the health and safety of Americans has been well known.

During the first Trump term in office, the Department of Defense and Drug Enforcement Administration began moving in the direction of designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. But when Joe Biden took office, the effort was sidelined. In fact, under Biden’s watch the threat from fentanyl metastasized as the border was thrown open for smuggling of everything from unaccompanied minors to deadly drugs.

Today, President Trump renewed the effort with an important Executive Order in recognition of the little-known but highly dangerous aspect of the fentanyl threat: fentanyl’s potential as a weapon of mass destruction.

Fentanyl’s potential as a weapon of mass destruction is especially severe given the proliferation of the drug along smuggling routes and on the streets of America.

Fentanyl has produced a public health crisis of terrible proportions. The horrible toll in human life from fentanyl as a drug has made fentanyl the number one cause of death in adults between the ages of 18 and 47. But fentanyl as a potential WMD in the hands of terrorists poses a threat that cocaine, heroin, crystal meth or PCP don’t even begin to pose.

Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin and 30 times more powerful. The carfentanyl strain of fentanyl is astonishingly dangerous (more on that below). One of the reasons that fentanyl is so dangerous is because a dosage error of the equivalent to a few grains of salt can prove lethal.

And dosing errors are not uncommon, mainly because of the source of much of the supply of fentanyl: Communist China via drug labs run by the narco-terrorist drug cartels in Latin America. Close ties between Chinese companies and Latin American criminal drug cartels ensure the steady flow of fentanyl for use in “cutting” heroin–to make it more addictive and cheaper at the same time.

In 2018 the U.S. government indicted members of the “Los Zheng” cartel -a Shanghai and Wuhan-based criminal enterprise- for “conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to import controlled substances into the United States, operating a continued criminal enterprise, money laundering, and other crimes.”

All of this is very disturbing, but only rises to the level of a national security threat when one considers a few key facts about fentanyl.

A US Customs and Border Patrol training document states: “A lethal dose of fentanyl is about the same size as just a few grains of salt.”

Stories of dangerous fentanyl contact are common. In March 2017, a police officer in East Liverpool, Ohio had to be rushed to the hospital after he brushed an “unknown powder” off of his uniform. That powder ended up being fentanyl. In August 2018, at the Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, Ohio, 29 officers, first responders and nurses were sped to the emergency room after an inmate spread just three grams of heroin-fentanyl mix around his prison cell. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency issued guidance that encourages strict safeguards for emergency responders who may encounter fentanyl.

If accidental contact with fentanyl can readily cause serious illness and even death, we can be sure that Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists have taken notice. In any case there is little doubt that in the hands of nefarious actors, such as terrorists, fentanyl can be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Decades ago, the US Department of Defense researched the possibility of using fentanyl as a crowd control agent but determined it was far too dangerous to use as a non-lethal agent. That didn’t stop the Russians however, who not only weaponized fentanyl, but used it in a hostage situation in a Moscow theater resulting in the death of more than 100 hostages. CDC guidance makes clear that if properly weaponized fentanyl does not have to be ingested or injected to kill.

Security experts have long regarded fentanyl as a chemical weapons threat. The drug’s high toxicity and increasing availability are “attractive” to potential adversaries “seeking nonconventional materials for a chemical attack,” James McDonnell, a former assistant secretary at DHS wrote in a memorandum in 2019.

Bloomberg News reported in 2018 that 118 pounds of fentanyl could conceivably kill 25 million people. Of course, weaponizing fentanyl to achieve such a massacre would be no easy feat but other scenarios, such as a terrorist releasing a small quantity on an airliner, could result in hundreds of deaths. Moreover, manufacturing fentanyl is not difficult for anyone with decent knowledge of chemistry.

Even worse is a form of fentanyl known as Carfentanyl. A Canadian study posed the question, “Which would you choose as a weapon of mass destruction: a thermonuclear bomb or carfentanyl?”

The answer:  Carfentanyl—and it’s not even particularly close. The study notes:

“One kilogram of carfentanil represents 20 million fatal 50 μg doses, enough to kill half the population of Canada. On a per kilogram basis, carfentanil is arguably 2000-fold deadlier than a thermonuclear bomb.”

There’s never been a drug like fentanyl before. For street drugs, fentanyl absolutely outpaces anything else in terms of lethality and danger. But most importantly, unlike drugs such as cocaine and crystal meth, fentanyl can be weaponized to create mass casualty events as a weapon of mass destruction- in similar fashion to long-known chemical agents such as Sarin, VX and mustard gas. In fact, the amount of fentanyl on average to make a lethal dose is much less than those of any of those recognized chemical agents. But fentanyl is far easier to acquire than Sarin, VX or mustard gas. And as such it must be viewed differently from other drugs.

It is vital that policymakers at all levels of government take the fentanyl threat seriously and treat it not just as a drug and health problem, but a potential WMD threat in the hands of terrorists.