What Does Fentanyl Have to Do With Alleged Drug Boats 2,600 Miles Away? Absolutely Nothing.
President Trump’s pretextual claim that fentanyl carrying drug boats in the Caribbean are an existential threat to Americans doesn’t pass muster.
President Donald Trump has ordered the killing of 64 people through "lethal kinetic strikes," with three more deaths reported on November 1, after another boat carrying alleged "narcoterrorists" was destroyed in the Caribbean.
The president has stated that those killed in strikes trafficked fentanyl, backed up by his dubious assertion that every boat taken out saves "25,000 American lives." As covered by Reason's Jacob Sullum, this claim conflates fentanyl with cocaine and other drugs from Latin America.
While the president has defended his actions as a necessary measure to combat the flow of fentanyl amid a domestic opioid crisis, there's no evidence these drug strikes have affected fentanyl trafficking or reduced overdose deaths.
Compared to 2024, the country has seen a 24 percent decline in drug overdose deaths this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports a 45 percent decrease in fentanyl seized on land and a 49 percent decrease in seizures over air and sea compared to last year.
If, as the president has previously said, these boats "pose a threat to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests," one would expect to see an increase in drug seizures rather than a decline. The president's claims also run contrary to those made by his Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In its 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, the DEA points to Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) as the prominent traffickers of illegal fentanyl, in collaboration with Chinese suppliers.
Given the location of the strikes—roughly 2,600 miles away from Mexico—there's little reason to believe the over 60 people killed so far were involved in fentanyl trafficking. A Government Accountability Office report on federal efforts to stop fentanyl smuggling found that 80 percent of fentanyl seizures by the Department of Homeland Security happened in the southwest border region during FY 2021–2024.
During the same period, seizures of precursor chemicals and the production equipment used to synthesize fentanyl typically occurred in the coastal and interior areas in the U.S., far from the Caribbean. The Congressional Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking reached a similar conclusion, finding that "Mexico is the principal source of this illicit fentanyl and its analogues today." Rather than smuggling fentanyl through Latin American fishing boats, the Commission notes that drug traffickers tend to "conceal hard-to-detect quantities in packages, in vehicles, and on persons and smuggle the drug across the U.S.–Mexico border."
Apart from having no tangible effect on opioid smuggling routes, the Trump administration's focus on the supply side of the opioid epidemic fails to address the root causes of the issue, doubling down on prohibition. This tactic has been ineffective in the war on drugs. The Trump administration could act on its mission to save American lives from the scourge of opioid addiction by supporting proven strategies at the state and federal levels, such as scaling treatments that work and providing wider access to those treatments.
While opioid addiction and opioid-related overdoses remain a problem, health care providers in the U.S. have seen marked improvements in dealing with the crisis, specifically through harm reduction strategies like pharmacy-based interventions, syringe services programs, and broader distribution of naloxone, a nonaddictive opioid reversal drug.
If killing fentanyl dealers and drug traffickers were the solution, the focus would be domestic. The majority of drug traffickers arrested—particularly in cartel strongholds, such as the southwest border, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean—are U.S. citizens.
Rather than unconstitutional lethal strikes far from the fentanyl crisis's origin, the Trump administration could support states using proven methods to reduce overdose risk and promote healthier lives for those with opioid use disorder.
