Fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction. Biden should do this before leaving office | Opinion

“There is no challenge more urgent in the Homeland than countering illicit fentanyl that is driving overdose deaths like a weapon of mass destruction.”

So said Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall, President Joe Biden’s homeland security advisor in remarks to the Soufan Center’s Global Summit on Counterterrorism and Political Violence posted to the White House website on September 13.

It wasn’t a fluke.

Days later Advisor Sherwood-Randall doubled down in an address to the President’s Summit of the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats on September 24: “I have devoted much of my life to countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I view fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. The lessons from that enduring challenge are directly relevant to the fight against illicit fentanyl and synthetic drugs today.” The remarks were likewise posted to the White House website.

With those statements, Sherwood-Randall earned the distinction of becoming the first senior official in the Biden Administration to formally and publicly recognize illicit fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Her perspective is far from a novel one. Over the past five years, what began as a fringe idea scoffed at by mainstream media and politicians has become mainstream. In the current Congress, there are no fewer than three separate pieces of legislation attempting to compel the Biden Administration to give illicit fentanyl WMD status: a resolution from Congressman Neal Dunn, R-Florida, a bill from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, and a bill from Congressman Brad Wenstrup, M.D., R-Ohio.

In September of 2022, a bipartisan group of 19 attorneys general led by AGs Ashley Moody, R-Florida, and William Tong, D-Connecticut, issued an open letter to Biden requesting WMD designation of illicit fentanyl.

A petition organized by the national nonprofit organization Families Against Fentanyl currently has over 85,000 signatures, with numbers growing by the day.

The most recent provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show an estimated 107,543 drug-related deaths in the United States in 2023 — the third straight year in which drug fatalities topped 100,000. The driver of these stubbornly (and unacceptably) high numbers? Synthetic opioids, which accounted for a projected 74,702 of 2023’s dead.

For its responsibility for mass nationwide death alone, illicit fentanyl should be declared a WMD, but Sherwood-Randall’s remarks — spoken in her official capacity as a key member of the president’s National Security Council — highlight the very real threat illicit fentanyl poses to our nation’s defense.

In 2022, a report issued by the President’s Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking concluded that sky-high drug-deaths represented a threat to the “national security and economic well-being” of the United States. That same report also found that “illicit synthetic opioids have the effect of a slow-motion weapon of mass destruction.”

Such opioids also have the potential to become a fast-motion weapon of mass destruction with the potential to be repurposed to affect a mass-casualty event. A 2022 exercise conducted by Harvard Disaster Medicine in Cambridge, Massachusetts explored the results of “drone-deployed dummy-opioid aerosol release” in a stadium. The results weren’t pretty — a staggering number of casualties and a full battery of first responders unprepared for dealing with such an attack.

In equating illicit fentanyl to a WMD, Dr. Sherwood-Randall echoed the actions of the Trump Administration, which was actively considering WMD designation according to an internal DHS memo leaked in 2019 which warned that “fentanyl is very likely a viable option for a chemical weapon attack.”

In 2021, a bipartisan coalition letter featuring senior national security officials spanning the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations implored President Biden to declare illicit fentanyl a WMD. With the words of Dr. Sherwood-Randall, this call now spans four presidential administrations, Democratic and Republican.

Consensus on the need for the federal government to classify illicit fentanyl as a WMD isn’t just emerging; it’s been achieved. In his final months in office, Biden has the opportunity to adopt the advice of his Homeland Security Advisor, issue WMD designation, and add to his legacy as the first president in history who took this necessary, life-saving step.