Reuters
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, December 23, 2024, p. 3
Phoenix. The next president of the United States, Donald Trump, declared that he will launch an anti-drug campaign to show the physical impact of using narcotics, such as fentanyl, and reiterated his threat to designate Mexican cartels as “terrorist organizations.”
Let’s advertise how bad drugs are for you. They ruin your appearance, they ruin your face, your skin, your teeth
Trump said yesterday at a conference of the conservative group Crucial Moment, in Phoenix, Arizona.
Trump gave few concrete details about the campaign, which he did not appear to have mentioned before and which he likened to running a political campaign. According to him, his administration will spend big money
in the program, although he later specified that it would be a very small amount of money, relatively
.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for more information.
Trump’s plan has echoes of the Just Say No anti-drug campaign, led by Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s to encourage young people to reject drugs.
It is estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans will die this year from synthetic opioid overdoses, most from fentanyl or closely related drugs.
The fentanyl crisis featured prominently in Trump’s campaign, even though deaths from synthetic opioids doubled under his administration from 2017 to 2021.
Trump also revived a campaign promise to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups.
I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations
he stated.
During his term in 2019, Trump shelved that plan at the request of then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said he wanted U.S. cooperation in the fight against drug gangs, not intervention.
Some U.S. officials had also privately expressed concerns that the move could damage relations with Mexico and hamper the Mexican government’s fight against drug cartels.
Trump’s official election program 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
.
The magnate recalled that he had a telephone conversation in November with the current president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, in which he assured that it was very strong
by pointing out the problem of undocumented migration and fentanyl trafficking.
I spoke with the new president of Mexico, who is a charming and wonderful woman (…), but I told her: this cannot be done to our country, we are not going to take it anymore
he declared.
Trump reiterated that once he returns to the White House in January he will sign an executive order to close the country’s borders to undocumented immigrants.
He insisted that the deportation will serve to expel members of foreign gangs and mafias who, he says, have entered the United States due to the immigration policy of the outgoing Joe Biden government.
Every foreign gang and people without documented stay, this entire criminal network that operates on US soil will be dismantled, deported and destroyed
he stated.
