President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
The order signing came during a Mexican Border Defense Medal Presentation in the Oval Office, after noting, “I’m taking one more step to protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl flooding into our country.”
“With this historic executive order I will sign today, we’re formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is what it is. No bomb does what this is doing; 200,000-300,000 people die every year that we know of,” he said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, there were an estimated 48,422 synthetic opioid overdose deaths or “fentanyl” deaths in 2024, following 76,282 in 2023.
Trump said he has overseen a 50 percent drop in fentanyl coming into the United States through the southern border and added that “China is working with us very closely on bringing down the number and the amount of fentanyl that’s being shipped.”
As the New York Post reported, precursor chemicals from China are often shipped to Mexico, where they are synthesized before being smuggled into the United States.
In between announcing the order and the signing of it, Trump presented 13 servicemembers with the Mexican Border Defense Medal.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth noted that the medal was established in 1918.
“What’s cool about this medal, it was actually first given out in 1918, so we’re reviving an old medal that existed — was given to men and women who defended the southern border,” Hegseth said.
“We used the exact same foundry with the exact same imagery, same color, same metal, same everything. So, our men and women will be wearing that very same medal as Americans 100 years before, who were asked to defend the sovereignty of our country,” he added.
Trump highlighted the extreme problems at the border under former President Joe Biden.
“In the four years before I took office, our southern border was surrendered to criminals, drug cartels, human traffickers, and child smugglers,” he said.
And after rampant illegal immigration under Biden, Trump’s administration has stopped catch and release, with zero illegal migrants being released into the United States for months and October producing the lowest number of illegal border crossings on record for Customs & Border Protection, as Breitbart News reported.
“More than 25,000 warriors have served in this historic operation. It is indeed an incredible and historic operation, and we’ve never done anything so effectively, and we’ve had a lot of victories,” Trump said.
“They’ve spent night and day enduring scorching hot and bitter cold, and they’ve given up their holidays and their weekends,” the president continued.
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