Following US strikes in Caracas early on Saturday (January 3), US President Donald Trump announced that the US had “captured” Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and flown them out of the country.These developments come weeks after Trump began threatening ground strikes in the South American nation, even as he insisted that he would push for regime change as part of his effort to curtail the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants. Last month, he designated “illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals” as weapons of mass destruction (WMD), even as the US military expanded its presence in the Caribbean Sea.How has the Trump administration characterised its war on drugs? How severe is the problem of fentanyl trafficking? And is Venezuela a major player in illicit drug trafficking?First, what is fentanyl?According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug which is used as a pain reliever and as an anaesthetic. It is about 50-100 times more potent than morphine.Opioids are a type of drug that either imitate or are derived from natural substances found in the opium poppy plant. They are highly addictive and produce a variety of pleasurable effects ranging from pain relief to euphoria. Patients who use prescription opioid-based painkillers are especially vulnerable to addiction and opioid abuse.Besides fentanyl, some common opioids include oxycodone, morphine, codeine, and heroin.While certain formulations of fentanyl feature on the WHO’s Model List of Essential Medicines, there is evidence that other synthetic drugs, such as heroin, may be laced with fentanyl to increase their potency. Further, sales of counterfeit drugs laced with fentanyl have added to the spike in its consumption and deaths from overdose, without users knowingly consuming it. According to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), even a small amount, as little as 2 mg, when consumed, can be fatal.Story continues below this adIn recent decades, the US has witnessed an “opioid epidemic”, with the number of people dying from a drug overdose in 2021 exceeding six times the number of deaths in 1999, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Over 75% of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 involved an opioid,” the CDC said.Among these, fentanyl accounts for the most deaths from overdose in the US, with the overdose rate from the drug tripling, from 5.7 per 100,000 in 2016 to 21.6 in 2021, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).Several experts have credited former US President Joe Biden with initiating measures to curtail their use. The Biden administration (2021-25) expanded access to opioid treatment medications, increased federal spending on addiction treatment by billions of dollars, and focused on “harm reduction” by providing Medicaid health insurance and housing to addicts even if they couldn’t stop using street drugs.How has Trump approached this issue?Under the Trump administration, the public response to the fentanyl crisis has evolved from the nature of a “national emergency”, a status the president accorded it in February 2025, to designating the drug as a weapon of mass destruction. In either case, Trump has sought to arm-twist countries into complying with American diktat.Story continues below this adSince he returned to the White House last January, Trump announced $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and spending on de-addiction programmes. He has since doubled down on this stance, signing an executive order in July which said harm reduction efforts “only facilitate illegal drug use.”Also in Explained | From bus driver to Chavez’s right hand and authoritarian dictator: Who is Nicolas Maduro?In February, he announced punitive tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China for failing to address illicit fentanyl and other drug trafficking, although the measure was intended to address the problem of illegal immigration from the US’s neighbours.In an executive order in February 2025, he noted that fentanyl trafficking “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. These tariffs, as well as his Liberation Day announcements last April, under which he imposed a base 10% tariff as well as country-specific “retaliatory” tariffs with all American trading partners, have since been challenged in court.The war on drugs, from Nixon to TrumpIn a press conference in June 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one”. Media coverage of the news helped popularise the term “war on drugs” as we know it today, but it can be argued that Nixon helped consolidate American interventions to curtail drug supply. This approach worked on two fronts — a domestic crackdown on drug abusers and dealers, and overseas efforts to curtail the supply.Story continues below this adThis practice prevailed into the 1990s, with President George HW Bush infamously staging an invasion of Panama to overthrow its dictator, Manuel Noriega and stop narco-trafficking out of the country.From 2010, the US under President Barack Obama sought to reframe the war on drugs as a public health issue, implementing measures such as decriminalising cannabis and offering support for drug addiction.When Trump took power in 2017, he focused his efforts on curtailing drug imports. He held Mexico and China responsible for fentanyl trafficking during his first term (2017-21). He continued this in his second term, adding Canada to his crosshairs.CHINA: China is the primary source of the precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl, and has long been held responsible for knowingly supplying these to drug smuggling gangs.Story continues below this adIn 2019, China said it would add fentanyl-related substances to a list of controlled narcotic drugs. Subsequently, some production shifted to India, where the export of precursor chemicals has been regulated since 2018, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration memo. However, a BBC report from August 2025 showed that trade in the precursor chemicals remains uncontrolled, with those involved in the business finding newer ways to flout the law.MEXICO: The Trump administration has accused Mexican criminal organisations such as the Sinaloa cartel of supplying fentanyl to the US, sourcing the raw material from China and producing the drug in Mexican labs.CANADA: In his second term, Trump targeted Canada for failing to curb fentanyl smuggling into the US.US customs data until August 2025 revealed that only 0.8% of all fentanyl seizures in the US were made at the Canadian border (with the rest entirely at the US border with Mexico). However, Canadian authorities flagged the increasing production of fentanyl using chemicals and lab equipment sourced from China last January.Story continues below this adVENEZUELA: Venezuela is a relatively minor player in illicit drug trafficking, serving mainly as a transit country to smuggle drugs produced elsewhere. Venezuelan drug cartels have thus far focused on moving cocaine from South America to Europe, where its consumption has exploded in recent years, and not to the US. The Trump administration has likely singled out Venezuela for an unrelated reason altogether.“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world,” former Indian ambassador to Venezuela R Viswanathan told The Indian Express in October. “If Venezuela starts pumping up oil, it will be in direct competition with the US, which has become one of the biggest exporters of oil. This is the reason the US doesn’t want Venezuela, Iran and Russia to export their oil.”He added that the US has previously pushed for regime change under the pretext of the “war on drugs”, but was very likely driven by economic interests in the region.“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. If Venezuela starts pumping up oil, it will be in direct competition with the US, which has become one of the biggest exporters of oil. This is the reason the US doesn’t want Venezuela, Iran and Russia to export their oil,” Viswanathan said.Story continues below this adSince September, the US has launched over 30 strikes on alleged drug-smuggling Venezuelan boats, killing over 100 people, engaged in skirmishes with military and commercial aircraft, and seized an oil tanker.