Trump vows to launch anti-drug ad campaign, designate Mexican cartels as terrorists By Reuters

By Alexandra Ulmer

PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would launch a new anti-drug ad campaign to highlight the physical effects of taking drugs like fentanyl and reiterated his threat to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

“We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you. They ruin your looks, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth,” Trump said at a conference for the conservative group Turning Point in Phoenix, Arizona.

Trump offered some specific details about the ad campaign that he apparently hadn’t mentioned before, and that he compared to a political campaign. He said his administration would spend “a lot of money” on the plan, but it would be “relatively a very small amount.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for additional information.

Trump’s plan has echoes of the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign led by former Republican first lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980s to encourage young Americans to give up drugs.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans are projected to die this year from synthetic opioid overdoses, most from fentanyl or closely related drugs.

The fentanyl crisis featured heavily in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, even though deaths from synthetic opioids more than doubled during his administration from 2017 to 2021.

Trump on Sunday also renewed a campaign promise to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups.

“I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said.

When he took office in 2019, Trump abandoned such a program at the request of then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said he wanted US cooperation in the fight against drug cartels, not intervention.

Some US officials also privately expressed concerns that the measure could damage relations with Mexico and hamper the Mexican government’s fight against drug trafficking.

Trump’s official campaign plan says that once he takes office, he will direct the Pentagon to use “special forces, cyber warfare and other covert and overt operations to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.”