OPINION:
The families of the nearly 50,000 people who died of fentanyl overdoses in 2024 deserve better. We owe the hollowed-out towns from West Virginia to Oregon serious solutions. That we’ve mistaken righteous anger for a coherent plan insults the memories of the quarter-million Americans fentanyl has killed since 2020.
Although the conversation concerning the recent missile strikes on alleged drug boats in the southern Caribbean has focused on whether the strikes are legal, an equally important question isn’t being asked: Are the strikes effective? There, the answer is an unambiguous “no.”
These strikes are affirmatively counterproductive. They will let more drugs onto our streets and let more poison claim more of our children. They preclude more effective drug seizure methods. They are a colossal waste of money. Worst of all, they steal attention and resources from more effective methods.
One of us has been fighting the war on drugs since the Reagan administration, so we understand how killing a drug dealer might feel good, even necessary. Cartel leaders, after all, are transparently evil men. Yet that evil, coupled with the determination and profit motives of the cartels themselves, makes it critical that we have the discipline to focus on what works and skip what doesn’t.
Missile strikes create a host of problems. First, dead men tell no tales. Once we’ve vaporized a boat, we cannot squeeze detained smugglers for information on methods, fellow conspirators and command structure. Information extracted from detained criminals could include the whereabouts of the head of the Sinaloa cartel, the location of drug “super tunnels,” a nationwide narcotics sting and numerous other, secret lifesaving operations we will never hear about. We won’t get such leads from the boats we’ve destroyed and the traffickers we’ve killed.
Further, these strikes are inordinately expensive. The Hellfire missiles used cost $150,000 each. The Reaper drones that fire them cost $30 million each. The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, now deployed to support the counternarcotics mission in the southern Caribbean, costs $8 million a day to operate. That’s not even counting the many man-hours that go into intelligence gathering for an operation of a successful strike, and people don’t work for free.
If stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. is the goal, the money could be far better spent elsewhere.
Some have argued that, even if the strikes are expensive, they are worth it as a deterrent. Here’s the problem: There is already a far more effective deterrent, namely that smuggling drugs via speedboat is expensive and ineffective. Cartels are a business, so they won’t pursue methods that don’t support their bottom lines. That is why virtually all fentanyl is smuggled through legal ports of entry across the southern border, not by small craft 500 miles from our shores. And make no mistake: Literally zero fentanyl is trafficked from South America, which makes the administration’s strategy egregiously cynical.
What missile strikes are doing, unfortunately, is distracting us from solutions that would help us seize far more fentanyl and save thousands of lives. As Fox News reported, artificial intelligence technologies that can identify trucks smuggling fentanyl across the border and have moved past proof-of-concept sit unused at the Department of Homeland Security.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided $6 billion for border security technology enhancements that could better detect fentanyl coming through our ports of entry, but the Homeland Security Department’s new rule that requires the secretary to approve all expenditures of more than $100,000 ensures we can field critical technologies only at a glacial pace. Hiring more Customs and Border Patrol agents — that is, the people most responsible for stopping drugs — remains a bureaucratic nightmare. Fixing these issues may be boring, but they would be effective.
This is the way the Trump administration should be addressing the drug crisis. That it isn’t betrays a lack of seriousness, a lack of competence or both. Drug smugglers aren’t the victims of these missile strikes; the real victims are the teens who will die from unwitting fentanyl use, the addicts who perish from adulterated dosages, and the parents and loved ones left to grieve.
The Trump administration owes these victims real solutions, not made-for-TV drone strikes.
• Robert Kelly is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. He served in the White House in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, working on counternarcotics issues, and is a former U.S. Coast Guard judge advocate general. Neal Urwitz is CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies. He served as a speechwriter for and adviser to the secretary of the Navy from 2021 to 2023.
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