Facts to Inform the Debate about the U.S. Government’s Anti-Drug Offensive in the Americas

U.S. drug overdose deaths, while in notable decline since late 2023, remain a public health emergency, demanding effective public health solutions for U.S. families and communities struggling with substance use. However, current actions by the Trump administration as responses to overdose deaths (particularly those related to fentanyl) have instead focused on the use of lethal force against individuals suspected of transporting drugs abroad, most notably the killings of at least 65 civilians in military strikes in the Caribbean.

As numerous experts have highlighted, these killings are unlawful under domestic and international law. Moreover, as shown over decades of supply-focused interdiction efforts, the use of force to block or destroy drug shipments does not curtail U.S. illegal drug availability or consumption, nor does it weaken organized crime.

As of November 1, the known death toll from 15 lethal U.S. strikes on civilian vessels is 65.

Drug traffickers in South America do not produce or traffic fentanyl.

• The State Department’s March 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report stated: “The Department of State, in consultation with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other relevant agencies, has identified Mexico”—especially its northwest, 3,000 miles from Venezuela—“as the only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States during the preceding calendar year.”
• A New York Times analysis concluded on September 3, 2025, “There is no proof that it [fentanyl] is manufactured or trafficked from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America.”
• In Colombia, Infobae reported in December 2023, “so far the National Police has not detected any fentanyl production laboratory in Colombia.” A senior police official told WOLA that year that the country’s few detections of fentanyl had been stolen from hospitals or pharmacies.

Most cocaine does not transit the Caribbean; the Pacific route is far more common.

• Venezuela is plagued by criminal activities, and there is evidence of deep links between government officials and illicit economies, including drug trafficking, fuel trafficking, illegal mining, and money laundering. The dismantling of democratic institutions under an authoritarian government allows officials and other actors to act with impunity. However, claims of this country being a source of fentanyl or the main transit country of U.S.-bound cocaine are not supported by evidence.
• In its 2020 report with data from 2019, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) found that about 8 percent of U.S.-bound cocaine departed through a “Caribbean corridor,” primarily from Venezuela. Another 16 percent departed Colombia (and perhaps some part of western Venezuela) via a “Western Caribbean Vector.” A much larger share — 74 percent — flowed through the Pacific Ocean via an “Eastern Pacific Vector.” Additionally, according to the DEA, “small amounts of cocaine are moved overland from Colombia to Panama.”
• The U.S. Southern Command’s 2022 Posture Statement noted that the Eastern Pacific is “the area through which 80 percent of drugs destined for the United States flow.” That would leave a maximum of 20 percent for the Caribbean, only some of which would depart Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.
• “In March 2020, the United States estimated that between 200 and 250 metric tons (MT) of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela annually,” noted the March 2025 State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. This report’s 2024 version noted, “A Venezuelan non-governmental organization assessed that cocaine trafficked through Venezuela in 2023 likely persisted at the same levels as the estimated 200 to 250 metric tons (MT) the United States estimated in 2020.”
• That amount—enough to fill roughly 3 to 5 semi trailers by volume—represented “roughly 10 to 13 percent of estimated global production,” the State Department reports add.
• (See also the New York Times’s October 9 graphical presentation, “Why Blowing Up Venezuelan Boats Won’t Stop the Flow of Drugs.”)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports a notable decline in national overdose deaths, especially fentanyl, attributable in large part to health interventions.

• “Fentanyl was involved in over 76,000 deaths in 2023, according to the new statistics, but just over 48,000 in 2024,” read a StatNews analysis of CDC data. That indicates a very sharp one-year drop—37 percent—in overdose deaths involving fentanyl.
• Overdose deaths from all drugs have fallen from over 110,000 per 12 months in 2023 to less than 80,000 per 12 months now. Deaths involving methamphetamine totaled 37,096 in 2024, and those involving cocaine totaled 30,833 in 2024. (Opioid use may have been involved in some of these fatalities).
• The CDC explains that the decline, particularly in fentanyl overdoses, is due largely to health interventions, including the provision of the overdose-reversing medication naloxone, medications for opioid use disorder, and other prevention and response services. 
• In spite of this progress, the current U.S. administration and Congress have drastically cut funding for health measures such as these, including nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade to Medicaid, the country’s number one source of treatment for substance use disorders.

Bombings of “drug” targets in the Western Hemisphere violate basic rights and make little or no difference to the drug trade.

A military operation against a drug production target in Latin America, such as a laboratory or a major kingpin, would do only minor, fleeting damage to organized crime, from which affected criminal groups would quickly recover.

• “Between 2019 and 2023, Mexico extradited an average of some 65 wanted criminal suspects per year” to the United States, Reuters reported, and hundreds before that. Colombia has extradited over 1,200 people, the vast majority to the United States, during its past three presidential terms. Many other major drug traffickers have been killed. None of these “kingpin” operations has affected drug supplies in the United States or weakened organized crime, as evidenced by reported inflation and purity-adjusted drug prices on U.S. streets, which have not increased in a way that scarcity would indicate. 
• If the people aboard the boats targeted so far were indeed involved in smuggling illegal drugs, they would have played minor roles in vast transshipment networks and will be easily replaced within the drug trade, even as their deaths fail to be investigated.
• Calling them “terrorist” or “narco-terrorist” does not unlock war authorities or permit military strikes.

Drug supply-reduction efforts, including those that deploy military assets and use of force, have no lasting impact when they leave in place the ungoverned territory and unpunished corruption that allow organized crime to thrive, fueled by the massive profits of supplying demand for prohibited substances. This reality is especially relevant when weighed against the illegality and cost in lives of current military strikes in the Caribbean.

• Though U.S. Southern Command no longer shares this information, during the late 2000s and early 2010s, it routinely reported detecting between 350 and 700 suspected maritime drug trafficking vessels in a year. And that may be about a quarter of all smuggling vessels transiting the Pacific and Caribbean each year. As of now, 15 boat strikes have already led to 65 people being killed; if the plan is to try to attack a greater percentage of smugglers, these unlawful, lethal strikes could increase to hundreds.

The U.S. military has interdicted cocaine in the Western Hemisphere since the 1980s, but there is no authorization for the use of lethal force against civilians

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Congress made the Department of Defense the single lead agency for overseas interdiction of illegal drugs.

• “Department of Defense personnel,” Title 10 U.S.C. Sec. 124 reads, “may operate equipment of the Department to intercept a vessel or an aircraft detected outside the land area of the United States for the purposes of (A) identifying and communicating with that vessel or aircraft; and (B) directing that vessel or aircraft to go to a location designated by appropriate civilian officials.” That specifically worded language does not authorize killing those aboard the craft, especially without a self-defense justification.
• In the decades since this provision became law, Navy and Coast Guard personnel have boarded an unknown but substantial number of vessels, interdicting thousands of tons of drugs, principally cocaine.
• Commanders of U.S. Southern Command have often told Congress that they want more detection, monitoring, and interdiction assets. They have never called, however, for the ability to carry out extrajudicial killings.

We need an honest assessment of our approach to illegal drugs that recognizes the limits and harms of a supply control drug strategy

• The focus on drug production fails to acknowledge that U.S. drug markets are robust, fed by substantial demand. Demand is strong despite the adoption of prohibition policies that boost the profitability of these products, further enriching organized crime. No successful approach can treat this as simply as a supply issue.
• Traditional indicators of supply control efforts, such as hectares of crops eradicated, tons of drugs seized, and the number of people arrested, convey a misleading sense of decisive action and progress. Illicit drug markets are dynamic, and drug traffickers hedge against inevitable product losses by ensuring ongoing production, by constantly experimenting with new distribution routes and modes, and by bribing and coercing government officials.
• Effectively addressing violence related to the illicit drug trade should be a shared priority for governments in the region, as should evidence-based strategies to reduce the lucrative nature of drug trafficking for criminal actors. However, describing drug traffickers as “poisoning” consumers in the United States fails to take into account the need to also put public health at the center of domestic U.S. policies, investing in evidence-based prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery efforts.
• The U.S. should focus its assistance on bolstering civilian justice institutions and strengthening the rule of law. For decades, U.S. administrations from both parties have backed foreign security forces with billions of dollars in aid, equipment, and training in the name of disrupting and dismantling drug trafficking organizations. These efforts have not slowed the flow of illicit drugs, but have often undermined human rights and citizen security. U.S. support should be directed at fortifying civilian justice institutions and the rule of law, and establishing a strict zero-tolerance policy for human rights abuses by U.S. personnel and recipients of U.S. security aid and training.