OPINION — “Within the 12-month interval ending in October 2024 [Fiscal Year 2024], 84,076 People died from a drug overdose, in accordance with the newest accessible provisional statistics from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), underscoring the devastating impact these cartels have on our nation.
Though these numbers present a 25 p.c decline because the similar 12-month interval final yr [Fiscal Year 2023] – when the nation misplaced 112,910 folks to drug poisonings – demonstrating optimistic momentum within the combat in opposition to these medicine and the organizations trafficking them, the risk stays grave. The development is hopeful, nonetheless. October 2024 was the eleventh consecutive month during which the CDC reported a discount, and the present statistics symbolize the biggest 12-month discount in drug overdose deaths ever recorded.”
The above was excerpted from the 2025 Nationwide Drug Menace Evaluation, an annual report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which was printed Might 12, 2025, by the Trump administration’s Division of Justice and the DEA.
I discuss with that 84,076 American death-by-drug overdose determine as a result of – though it’s far larger than acceptable — it’s a lot decrease than figures used just lately by President Trump to justify his just lately stepped up U.S. navy operations in opposition to drug cartels and significantly alleged narco-traffickers off the Venezuelan coast.
Again on September 5, when President Trump was defending the September killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan narco-traffickers, he stated, “We’re robust on medicine. We don’t need medicine killing our folks. I imagine we misplaced 300,000. You recognize, they all the time say 95[,000], 100,000. I imagine they’ve been saying that for 20 years. I imagine we misplaced 300,000 folks final yr.”
On September 15, throughout an Oval Workplace assembly, President Trump stated of drug cartels, “They killed 300,000 folks in our nation final yr and we’re not letting it occur anymore.” Later that very same day, at an impromptu airport press convention, President Trump mistakenly stated, “the truth that 300 million folks died final yr from medicine, that’s what’s unlawful.”
Solely President Trump is aware of why he inflates the variety of American drug deaths on this nation that his personal DEA officers have offered to the general public. However to me, it exhibits he needs to justify this latest tactic of blowing up Venezuelan speedboats on the Caribbean Sea.
The September 2, September 15, and September 19 assaults reportedly have killed 17 people with out the U.S. navy first stopping any of the speedboats to find out whether or not they’re narco-trafficking or not – as they did with a Venezuelan fishing boat on September 13.
Nonetheless, for the three assaults, President Trump offered video tapes which he stated confirmed the velocity boats every being destroyed. As well as, each he and Division of Battle Secretary Pete Hegseth stated with the primary two, there are voice intercept tapes proving medicine have been concerned and that they have been destined for the U.S. “We now have recorded proof and proof,” Trump advised reporters on September15, “We all know what time they have been leaving, once they have been leaving, what they’d, and all the different issues that you just’d wish to have.”
However neither these voice tapes nor some other particular proof has been made public.
In his September 4, letter to Congress, required by the Battle Powers Act after the September 2 assault, Trump wrote, “I directed these actions in step with my duty to guard People and United States pursuits overseas and in furtherance of nationwide safety and international coverage pursuits, pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Government to conduct international relations.”
In the meantime, many authorized consultants, together with retired Pentagon attorneys, have questioned the legality underneath the regulation of wars, maritime regulation or human rights conventions for these U.S. assaults. Such assaults additionally contradict longtime U.S. navy observe.
My additional concern is that at his September 15, Oval Workplace alternate with reporters, President Trump mused that “there isn’t any medicine coming by sea, however they do come by land. And you understand what? We’re telling the cartels proper now, we will be stopping them, too. After they come by land, we will be stopping them the identical manner we cease the boats.”
The notion that Trump would order such an assault on one other nation’s land will not be far-fetched.
Again in the summertime of 2020, throughout his first time period in workplace, Trump privately requested his then-Protection Secretary Mark Esper, about launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs, in accordance with Esper’s 2022 memoir A Sacred Oath.
Early final month, each NBC and The New York Occasions reported that Trump had reportedly despatched a secret directive to the Pentagon asking for choices to assault Latin American drug cartels after they’d been named as terrorist organizations.
Final Friday, The New York Occasions printed a narrative that stated, “Draft laws is circulating on the White Home and on Capitol Hill that may hand President Trump sweeping energy to wage struggle in opposition to drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” in addition to in opposition to any nation he says has harbored or aided them, in accordance with folks aware of the matter.”
That Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill are considering laws to justify what they’re already doing exhibits they acknowledge some authorized authority is required. Nonetheless, what’s additionally lacking from a lot of the present media protection is what the U.S. had initiated through the Biden administration to counter hemisphere drug cartels.
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Again in February 2025, The New York Occasions disclosed that the CIA underneath the Biden administration had, as a part of bilateral cooperation with Mexico, begun secret drone flights properly into Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs, and that the Trump administration was rising them.
CIA officers in Mexico handed data collected by the drones to Mexican officers, in accordance with the Occasions, however the Mexican authorities was gradual to take motion in opposition to the labs, though the Mexican authorities did use a few of the CIA data to make arrests.
Throughout a February 19, 2025, information convention, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum described the CIA drone program as a part of Mexico’s longstanding cooperation with U.S. forces. Nonetheless, on September 10, Reuters printed a extra intensive story about CIA’s counter-drug actions in Mexico, its reporters having spoken to greater than 60 present and former U.S. and Mexican safety sources, together with former CIA officers and diplomats and navy officers from each nations.
With the permission of the Mexican authorities, Reuters stated, the CIA had, in a beforehand covert, years-old program, individually vetted, educated and outfitted two Mexican navy models – a Mexican Military group and a particular Mexican Navy intelligence outfit. The Military outfit is comprised of lots of of CIA-trained particular forces and, Reuters stated, “is seen because the navy power in Mexico most able to nabbing closely armed drug lords holed up in fortified mountain hideouts.
For instance, Reuters reported, “The CIA’s Mexican Military group in January 2023 nabbed Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of the imprisoned cartel kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.’”
Extra just lately, CIA underneath the Trump administration, has created a brand new Americas and Counternarcotics Mission Heart, Reuters has stated, with prime counterterrorism officers reassigned to work on Mexican cartels. The company additionally has elevated its already existent drone surveillance flights south of the border.
Nonetheless, I be part of Washington Put up Columnist David Ignatius when he questions: “Why has the [U.S.] navy been so silent because the Trump administration has pushed the bounds of regulation by…attacking alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats overseas?”
As I’ve famous in earlier columns, on February 21, Hegseth, at a time when the highest Navy Choose Advocate Normal (JAG) had simply retired, fired the highest Military and Air Power JAGs giving as his solely said causes that he thought of them not “properly suited” for the job. Hegseth additionally stated he needed to keep away from “roadblocks to orders which might be given by a Commander-in-Chief.”
Ignatius identified, “The Trump workforce has gutted the JAGs — decide advocate generals — who’re imagined to advise commanders on the rule of regulation, together with whether or not presidential orders are authorized. With out these impartial navy attorneys backing them up, commanders haven’t any recourse apart from to conform or resign.”
President Trump, who needed to win a Peace Prize, it appears is now firmly on a struggle path.
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