Donald Trump declares Mexican drug cartels as terrorists ahead of new anti-drug campaign
US President-elect Donald Trump says he will launch a new anti-drug advertising campaign emphasising the physical impact of taking drugs like fentanyl and has repeated a threat to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organisations.
“We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you. They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth,” Trump said at a conference of the conservative group Turning Point in Phoenix, Arizona on Sunday.
Trump gave few concrete details about the ad campaign, which he does not appear to have mentioned before and that he likened to running a political campaign. He said his administration would spend “a lot of money” on the program but that it would be a “very small amount of money, relatively”.
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Trump’s plan has echoes of the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, led by Republican former first lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980s to encourage young Americans to refuse drugs.
Between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans are projected to die from synthetic opioid overdoses this year, most from taking fentanyl or closely related drugs.
The fentanyl crisis featured heavily in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, even though synthetic opioid deaths more than doubled under his 2017-2021 administration.
Trump also revived a campaign vow to designate Mexico’s drug cartels as terrorist groups.
“I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organisations,” Trump said.
While in office in 2019, Trump shelved such a plan at the request of Mexico’s then-President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he wanted US co-operation on fighting drug gangs, not intervention.
Some US officials had also privately expressed misgivings that the measure could damage relations with Mexico and hinder the Mexican government’s fight against drug trafficking.
Trump’s official election platform says that when he takes office he will order the Pentagon to use “special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations”.
