Donald Trump has unveiled a new strategy for dealing with the fentanyl crisis.
“I will be working on a large-scale United States Advertising Campaign explaining how bad fentanyl is for people to use —Millions of lives being so needlessly destroyed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “By the time the campaign is over, everyone will know how really bad the horror of this drug is.”
Trump did not provide further details about what the campaign would look like. On Monday, he vowed to impose tariffs on China and Mexico to get their governments to do more about the fentanyl crisis, which killed 73,838 people in the US in 2022, the year for which the most recent data is available.
Trump raised concerns about the drug entering the US through Mexico. The country’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo responded in a written statement: “Mexico has consistently expressed its willingness to help prevent the fentanyl epidemic in the United States from continuing.
“This is, after all, a public health and consumption problem within your society. So far this year, Mexican armed forces and prosecutors have seized tons of various types of drugs, 10,340 firearms, and have detained 15,640 individuals for violence related to drug trafficking.”
Trump’s social media post came out around the time he announced he had a “productive” conversation with Sheinbaum. He claimed the president agreed to “stop migration.” Sheinbaum said the two had an “excellent conversation” but disagreed with Trump’s characterization of the call.
“We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to maintain bridges between governments and people,” she said on X.
A majority of chemical precursors are produced in China. Trump has previously called on the country’s government to give the “death penalty” to drug dealers caught shipping the drug into the US. If they don’t, Trump publicly said he would add 10 percent to tariffs already placed on the nation.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy, Liu Pengyu, told The Hill: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war.”
Fentanyl is similar to morphine but about 100 times more potent. The illicit drug, which is primarily manufactured in foreign labs and smuggled into the US through Mexico among other routes, is being distributed across the country, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, are the primary driver of overdose deaths in the US.
