PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody sent a letter urging President Biden to declare fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction.”
If the president acts on Moody’s letter by either using his executive authority or urging Congress to designate fentanyl as a WMD, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon would have to work to wage a war against the deadly drug.
Moody, in her letter, urged the president to invoke this designation under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) or urge Congress to pass the “Fentanyl is a WMD Act.”
“Given how many Americans are being murdered, the whole federal government and every tactic and capability that we have should be utilized to stop the death and destruction that fentanyl is causing,” she said in her letter.
Moody cited several incidents in Florida where fentanyl has been responsible for recent deaths including nine in Gadsden County during the weekend of July 4. Police reports state that 19 people in Gadsden County overdosed on “illegal drugs that were believed to have been tainted with fentanyl.”
The U.S. government defines a weapon of mass destruction as a “nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device(s) that is intended to harm a large number of people.”
Moody described fentanyl as a “very likely viable option for a chemical weapon attack.”
“Relying on non-state criminal actors and terrorists to think or act as expected is a losing proposition. The reality is that the deadliness of fentanyl combined with its sheer availability in Mexico to criminal cartels and non-state actors makes it an increasingly likely weapon for use,” Moody stated in her letter.
