Written by Alexandra Ulmer
PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would launch a new anti-drug advertising campaign to show the physical impact of using drugs such as fentanyl and repeated his threat to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
“We're going to announce how dangerous drugs are for you,” Trump said at a conference of the conservative group Turning Point in Phoenix, Arizona. “They ruin your looks, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth.” .
Trump offered few concrete details about the ad campaign, which he apparently had never mentioned before and likened to running a political campaign. He said his administration would spend “a lot of money” on the program but it would be a “relatively very small amount of money.”
Trump's transition team did not respond to a request for more 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 reject drugs.
Between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans are expected to die from synthetic opioid overdoses this year, most from taking fentanyl or drugs closely related to it.
The fentanyl crisis featured heavily in Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, even though deaths from synthetic opioids more than doubled under his 2017-2021 administration.
Trump on Sunday also renewed his campaign pledge to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups.
“I will immediately designate these gangs as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said.
While in office in 2019, Trump shelved such a plan at the request of then-Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who said he wanted U.S. cooperation in fighting drug cartels, not interference.
Some US officials have also privately expressed concerns that the measure could harm relations with Mexico and hamper the Mexican government's fight against drug trafficking.
Trump's official campaign platform says that when he takes office, he will order the Pentagon to use “special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt measures to inflict maximum damage to the cartel's leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”
