Pentagon, DHS considering designating fentanyl a WMD, memo says

By David Shortell, CNN
Updated 1717 GMT (0117 HKT) April 21, 2019

(CNN) — Top military and Homeland Security officials are considering classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, according to an internal DHS memo.

The synthetic opioid, blamed in health surveys for surging drug overdose deaths in the United States, has for decades concerned national security officials because of its potential widespread lethality in terror attacks, and in recent months, officials from DHS and the Pentagon have met to discuss an official WMD designation as a tool to disrupt the drug's widespread availability on the black market, the memo says.

"Fentanyl's high toxicity and increasing availability are attractive to threat actors seeking nonconventional materials for a chemical weapons attack," the DHS assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction, James F. McDonnell, wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the military news publication Task & Purpose.

A DHS official confirmed the authenticity of the memo, which was sent to then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in February.

The national security threat posed by fentanyl has remained largely out of the public eye, but the Trump administration has made thwarting its illegal distribution a centerpiece of the campaign against the opioid crisis.

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