Washington, 16 December (H.S.): President Donald Trump on Monday inscribed a watershed executive order christening illicit fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, recasting the synthetic opioid—responsible for 200,000 to 300,000 annual American fatalities—as a national security cataclysm akin to chemical armaments rather than mere narcotics.

This audacious reclassification, unveiled amid a White House ceremony honouring border sentinels with the inaugural Mexican Border Defence Medal, arms the Pentagon, intelligence apparatuses, and Justice Department with extraordinary prerogatives: WMD nonproliferation intelligence to map smuggling webs, fortified prosecutions yielding sterner sentences, and military adjuncts to law enforcement, all predicated on fentanyl's lethality—two milligrams equating a fatal dose, stealthier than table salt grains.

No bomb does what this is doing, Trump avowed, lambasting adversaries intent on drugging out our country, with Mexico as principal conduit and China the precursor fount, amid prior cartel terror designations enabling over 20 Caribbean-Pacific strikes slaying 80-plus suspects since September—despite legal qualms and polls revealing public unease, even among Republicans.

The decree dovetails Trump's hemispheric dominance blueprint, spotlighting border impermeability under six months of effectively zero crossings, while critics decry potential overreach, questioning martial precedents for domestic poisons and efficacy against land-smuggled payloads over maritime phantoms.

As diplomatic salvos target Beijing's complicity and Latin cartels' dissolution, this gambit portends seismic shifts in counter-narcotics, fusing public health imperatives with strategic deterrence.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar