Although President Donald Trump frequently decries the threat that fentanyl poses to Americans, his comments reveal several misconceptions about the drug. He thinks Canada is an important source of illicit fentanyl, which it isn't. He thinks fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs, which they don't. He thinks the boats targeted by his deadly military campaign against suspected cocaine couriers in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific are carrying fentanyl, which they aren't. Even if they were, his oft-repeated claim that he saves "25,000 American lives" each time he blows up one of those boats—which implies that he has already prevented nine times more drug-related deaths than were recorded in the United States last year—would be patently preposterous.
Trump's fentanyl fantasies reached a new level of absurdity this week, when he issued an executive order "designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction." As relevant here, federal law defines a "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD) to include "any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals."
