Colorado Rep Lauren Boebert introduced new legislation that seeks to classify the opioid fentanyl, which can be lethal if not administered by a trained medical professional, as a weapon of mass destruction.
“It is time to call fentanyl what it is: a weapon of mass destruction that is destroying our nation,” the congresswoman wrote in a press release introducing the “Fentanyl is a WMD Act” on Monday.
In the congresswoman’s home state of Colorado, the substance has claimed the lives of 900 people in 2020 alone, while across the country, preliminary statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that there were an estimated 71,238 deaths caused from the drug alone.
The health agency noted that drug overdoses from all opioids, which were primarily driven by fentanyl, led to a 28 per cent increase from the year before, pushing the overall death total from opioids to over 100,000 annually for 2021.
“The saddest thing about the fentanyl crisis is that it is preventable,” the Republican congresswoman wrote, adding that, “national security experts know that the vast majority of deadly fentanyl plaguing our communities comes across the southern border.”
Ms Boebert told Fox News in an interview that, should the bill in the House and the Senate, the painkiller would be under the purview of several agencies, not solely the Department of Homeland Security.
“This would enable the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Department of Defense to better coordinate their efforts and immediately publish the necessary administrative directive to eliminate the threat posed by this deadly substance,” she told the news network in an interview shortly after the bill’s introduction.
Like how botulinum toxin is classified as a weapon of mass destruction in the US, but its legal form, Botox, is allowed in medical settings, Ms Boebert noted in her release how her bill would only target fentanyl, which can be prescribed to treat severe pain and for scientific research, in its illicit use.
This isn’t the first time that government officials have considered moving the deadly substance into the WMD category.
Back in 2019, a leaked memo from the DHS, first reported on by Task & Purpose, detailed how the federal agency was considering classifying fentanyl as a WMD “when certain criteria are met” and added that federal officials had “long regarded fentanyl as a chemical weapons threat”.
The drug, 100 times stronger than morphine, has been described by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to be lethal when as little as two milligrams is administered within a pill, all of which would depend on a person’s body size, tolerance level and past usage.
“Fentanyl’s high toxicity and increasing availability are attractive to threat actors seeking nonconventional materials for a chemical weapons attack," wrote James McDonnell, the then-DHS assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction, in the February 2019 memo.
In March 2022, the Congressional Research Service said in a report on illicit fentanyl and classifying it as a WMB that while designating the drug “does not appear necessary”, Congress could consider developing “legislation to improve upon perceived shortcomings in the US government’s approach to addressing fentanyl”.
As recently as last July, an advocacy organisation published an open letter to President Joe Biden requesting that the US leader classify fentanyl as a WMD through an executive order.
“Not only is illicit fentanyl being used by drug traffickers to poison thousands of unsuspecting Americans, it is also a chemical weapon that poses a very real threat in the wrong hands,” Families Against Fentanyl founder James Rauh stated in the letter. “Formally declaring illicit fentanyl a Weapon of Mass Destruction will allow the federal government to engage agencies and resources thus far unused in the fight against the fentanyl epidemic, putting cartels on notice and saving American lives.”
In December 2021, the president signed an executive order that targeted transnational criminal and drug networks, which declared a national emergency with respect to international trafficking of illegal drugs, including “fentanyl and other synthetic opioids”.
Through this executive order, it allows the secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions on any individual who engages in activities that contribute to or pose a risk of contributing to “the international proliferation of illicit drugs”.
