Trump classifies highly addictive painkiller as 'weapon of mass destruction'

Donald Trump has declared his own war on drugs, and while the United States of America's pharmaceutical industry continues to boom, the President has been called out about his claims about some drugs you might not think twice about taking.

In the aftermath of medical experts sounding alarms for Donald Trump's statement that Tylenol is linked to autism and the so-called 'Tylenol Town' rebuking his claims, he's now taking a common but addictive prescription painkiller to task.

The POTUS has been busy signing executive orders since he returned to office in January 2025, but after blocking individual states in terms of regulating artificial intelligence, he's now turned his attention to an ongoing war on drugs.

Vowing to sign another executive order, the Commander-in-Chief referred to fentanyl as a 'weapon of mass destruction' that he maintained kills 300,000 people each year.

Speaking at the Oval Office as he awarded medals to soldiers and marines deployed along the US-Mexico border, he then raised his concerns about fentanyl.

While he acknowledged that fentanyl is "very important for medicine, for anesthesia [and][various other things," he says it 'becomes bad' when mixed with other things.

Typically, fentanyl will be prescribed by medical professionals to deal with long-term pain via patches or used in hospitals to go alongside anaesthesia due to its fast-acting nature in terms of pain relief.

Fentanyl is also known to be administered in quick-acting formulations like lozenges and nasal sprays for the likes of cancer patients, while it's also common in other forms of palliative care.

It's said that fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and with this in mind, it's a powerful opioid that the National Institute of Drug Abuse regularly warns us about.

In terms of Trump's takedown of fentanyl, he went on to claim that fentanyl is being mixed in Mexico, with his officers apparently seizing 'millions' of pills containing it in recent months.

The President went on to accuse the likes of Venezuela and other countries of sending fentanyl to America as a deliberate way to kill citizens instead of just making money as the illegal drug industry booms.

Calling out 'narco terrorists', Trump referred to “foreign terrorist organisations" and added: "That’s why today, 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.”

In the appropriately named "Designating Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction", the President states: "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."

It's unclear whether this will affect the legal prescription of fentanyl, but either way, Trump has called on the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General to decide if the Pentagon needs to give military resources to the Justice Department, noting a tiny part of US law that gives the latter 'assistance' during an “emergency situation involving a weapon of mass destruction.”

Back in the Oval Office, Trump blamed fentanyl for splitting families apart as he concluded: "They've destroyed a lot of families, because when they lose a child, or even if their child is heavily addicted, you lose that family, the family will never be the same."

As Trump again threatens attacks on Venezuela by land, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has said that this pressure campaign from the USA is an attempt to topple his government.