Trump: ‘We Have Launched an All-Out War on Fentanyl Traffickers; It Is a War that We Are Going to Win’

Trump: “This department will not rest until we have ended the fentanyl epidemic in America once and for all. In less than two months since I took office, the DEA and FBI have seized nearly one million deadly doses of fentanyl. And that’s just the beginning. (applause) At my direction and working with Pam and everybody else, we’ve launched an all-out war on fentanyl traffickers and it’s a war that we’re going to win. We’re going to win this war. I spoke with the president of Mexico, very nice woman, very fine woman, and I said let me ask you, you’re sending a lot of drugs into our country. We’re not liking it at all. Can’t do that. But I said, is Mexico — does it have much of a drug? She said, no, we’re not a consuming nation. I thought it was an interesting term. And I said why? And — which I’ve heard also, by the way, they’re not a consuming nation. They distribute, but they don’t consume. But I said, why are you not a consuming — well, we’re very close with family, I said, so we’re very close with family too. I mean, our families are being devastated and we’re just as close. Why else? She said, well, we spend a lot of money on advertising, saying how bad drugs are. They’re very rough ads. They show the skin falling off and the teeth falling out. Going blind and losing hair and everything that these things do, you look like you just came out of a horrible concentration camp.

And she said it was — they’re rough ads. And it’s not often that I feel I’ve learned something from a phone call because I’ve been, I’ve had a lot of phone calls over my life. But I realized right then and there what a great idea that is. And we have hired Susie, a great person, who did a lot of our campaign work and we’ve come up with an advertising campaign that’s I think really incredible. More than anything else. It’s terrible to watch, terrible to watch. It’s the only way it’s going to work. And I would be, because we got the numbers down, 18 percent, we’d have a blue ribbon committee headed by the First Lady of the United States, who everyone loves and some of her friends. And you know, they worked so hard, but it was, it’s a tough, it’s a tough deal. They’re dealing with very smart and very vicious people. You know, some of those businesses, those cartels are run better than any business in America. They say they’re run incredibly, not just here, they — all over the world, they’re run like a major business, but in many cases better. And I said, we got it 18 percent down. Well, 18 percent is incredible. It’s like a record. But when you think of it, it’s not very much.

And the way you get it down, if you want to get it down to close to 100 percent, is with the death penalty. But I think maybe America is not ready for that. China has the death penalty. Singapore has the death penalty. Various places have the death penalty. Wherever you have the death penalty, you don’t have drugs. But I just don’t know if this country is ready for it. So I tell people, and it’s always an option, but I don’t know. I just don’t know if you’re ready for it. And that’s okay. It’s nothing you can do. But what we’re going to do is we’re doing this campaign. And I think we can get it down 50, 5-0 percent with this campaign because when people see all the horrible things that these drugs do to you and we’re especially focused on fentanyl, when they see all of the horrible things that happen when you take drugs, how you look, you lose your look. Everyone’s vain. They don’t want to lose their look. A look is so important and I think when they see these things, they may say, you know what, I’m going to take a pass, but there is big danger. Pam and I were talking about it before.

A lot of people are taking fentanyl and not even knowing. They think they’re doing something else or maybe taking another drug, but at a much lower level, and they die. You can put on the pin, think of this, the head of a pin, fentanyl, and it’s too much and it will kill the strongest person in the room and it’s amazing. But we’re going to do this campaign, it’s going to be launched fairly soon, Susie. And I think it’s going to have a big impact, a big impact. I think if we got it down by another 30, 35 points and I really believe we can, I think that’s an incredible idea. So I thank the president of Mexico. Actually, it was a — it was a call on tariffs and we talked about drugs. And she gave me an idea that I think will be very successful, and based on what I saw, it’s going to be amazing.”