Trump's Trials - Trump designates street fentanyl as WMD, escalating militarization of drug war

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order designating the street drug fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. NPR's Brian Mann reports. Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and you're listening to Trump's terms from NPR. We're under invasion from within. If you're not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will. We all serve at the pleasure of the president. The golden age of America is upon us. We are in the golden age. Each episode, we bring you the latest news about the 47th president and the policy changes he is pursuing on his own terms.

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available wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stevenskeep in Washington, D.C. The president has declared that as far as he is concerned, fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction. The president described it as closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic in an executive order on Monday. So what are the effects of saying the different words? Here's NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann. Street fentanyl began spreading fast during Trump's first term, and the carnage continued under Biden, with fentanyl killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said fentanyl deaths among American civilians are worse than in many wars. 200 to 300,000 people die every year that we know of. So we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. In fact, Trump's numbers are wildly influential. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl killed roughly 48,000 people in the U.S. last year. That's a big drop from the year before. Experts also say fentanyl would be difficult to use as a weapon of mass destruction. There's only one documented incident worldwide in 2002 where the Russian government weaponized fentanyl in gas form.

There have been no such cases reported in the U.S. Jeffrey Singer is a physician and an expert on street drugs at the Cato Institute. I don't know how you could equate smugglers meeting market demand and selling something illegal to people who want to buy it as an act of war. Most drug policy experts also say designating fentanyl as a WMD isn't likely to cut the supply of drugs on American streets or slow U.S. overdose deaths. But this executive order comes as part of a wider militarization of the U.S. war against street drugs that includes military strikes on alleged drug-running boats and reclassified. drug cartels as terrorist organizations. While escalating the U.S. military's role in the drug war, Trump has also pardoned a growing number of high-level convicted drug traffickers, and the federal government has slashed funding for Medicaid, the insurance program that covers most Americans

struggling with fentanyl addiction. Brian Mann, NPR News. You have heard a lot about public media this year. It's what makes NPR. our podcasts like this one unique. Public media is made for you. We are not thinking about shareholders or advertisers. We are thinking about what you know, what you're curious about, what you want to understand in a deeper way. Here in the U.S., the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, said public media should be responsive

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