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President Donald Trump issued an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” on Monday, in the latest escalation of his administration’s supposed campaign against drug trafficking.

“[T]he potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries is a serious threat to the United States,” the order says. It directs the government to investigate and prosecute those involved in the illicit fentanyl trade.

In a press conference announcing the declaration, Trump falsely claimed that “two to three hundred thousand people die every year” from the drug — a wildly inflated number, with the true figure being in the tens of thousands per year.

“There’s no doubt that America’s adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States, in part because they want to kill Americans,” Trump went on.

It’s unclear what the immediate impacts of the order will be. However, the Trump administration has been using its supposed campaign against the drug trade as a pretext for crackdowns at the U.S.-Mexico border as well as military escalation in Latin........

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