The executive order President Donald Trump signed Monday designating fentanyl and the opioid’s precursor chemicals as weapons of mass destruction has “zero legal impact,” said CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig during a “NewsNight” appearance later that evening.
“It is completely meaningless,” said Honig. “It’s symbolic. Federal law describes what a weapon of mass destruction is. Generally, it has to be an incendiary device, something that blows up, something that shoots, something that disseminates poison, that kind of thing.”
He added, “If you commit a crime involving a weapon of mass destruction, it’s very serious. Penalties involved could be life in prison, could be death if someone dies. But the president saying drugs or fentanyl are now weapons of mass destruction has zero, zero legal impact.”
The U.S. has launched deadly military strikes against alleged drug smugglers in Caribbean and Pacific waters since September, with Trump maintaining that these potentially extrajudicial killings aim almost exclusively to curb the flow of narcotics into the country.
Honig argued Trump has no authority to designate drugs as weapons, let alone WMDs.
