Ex-War Department official warns terrorists may one day aerosolize fentanyl, praises Trump move

The booming illicit fentanyl trade has made deadly opioid ingredients far more accessible around the globe, greatly increasing the risk that a terror group or rogue state actor will one day try to aerosolize the drug to create mass casualties, a former top Department of War official told Just the News. 

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction David F. Lasseter, praised President Donald Trump's declaration this month of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, saying it would create powerful new tools to fight the current drug cartels' scourge that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and would equip U.S. security agencies to counter future efforts to create an aerosolized fentanyl weapon that could kill millions.

Weaponizing fentanyl

"Look, this is a scourge on American society, but it also has really significant impacts if it is weaponized," Lasseter said in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday night on the Just the News, No Noise television show. "And the chemicals in illicit fentanyl and its precursors have wreaked havoc, as we've talked about on the health side. But there's really some significant concerns about what it could do if it weaponized."

Lasseter noted that Russian security forces in 2002 inadvertently killed 130 hostages during an alleged Chechen terrorism incident when they pumped a gas form of fentanyl into a building, hoping to anesthetize the terrorists but made the formula too strong as to be lethal to many.

"I've been asked, you know, has it been weaponized? Can it be weaponized? I always point back to the 2002 incident in Russia, where Chechen terrorists took over a movie theater and the Russian security forces didn't want to go in against 40 heavily armed Chechen terrorists," he explained. 

130 hostages killed as collateral damage of fentanyl-related gas

"So what did they do? They used a fentanyl analog. They pumped it through the ventilation system, really in a desire to incapacitate the terrorists and those inside," he added. "But what happened when they went in was, after killing the terrorists that were there, they ended up being about 130 hostages dead because of the impact and the severity of this chemical."

The Russian incident, he said, gives terrorists or other bad actors a template for a possible aerosolized fentanyl bomb, especially two decades later when the precursor chemicals are far more available because of the drug cartels' mass production.

"If you think about that from a weaponization standpoint, if an aerosolized form like that was used to poison water supplies or even food, it is significant," he said. "And we've seen with the proliferation of other illicit materials and those that could be made into weapons of mass destruction. It's a significant thing."

The possibility that fentanyl could one day be aerosolized as a weapon was studied by the National Defense University in 2019, just as America's street-level opioid crisis was beginning. It urged Western nations to adapt that Chemical Weapons Convention treaty to add fentanyl as a weapon, something that has not yet happened.

Nations have not recognized use of fentanyl gas as a war crime

"It is clear that there is at least a risk that fentanyl compounds could be used as chemical weapons. To mitigate that risk, the CWC Conference of States Parties should adopt the position advanced by Australia, Switzerland, and the United States, among others, that the aerosolized use of central nervous system–acting agents, like fentanyl, for law enforcement is inconsistent with the Chemical Weapons Convention," the report concluded.

"The Department of Defense also should continue to advance its understanding of fentanyl compounds as potential chemical weapons and how to counter them and be prepared to produce and field material and non-material countermeasures with U.S. forces at such time that the threat intelligence may merit," it added.

Lasseter said the fact that fentanyl is not yet listed in the chemical weapons treaty doesn't mean it isn't banned by international law because the treaty outlaws the use of any chemicals designed to intentionally inflict mass casualties.

"We could look at the Chemical Weapons Convention, they would all say, 'Oh, well, it's not, you know, it's not listed. It's not in violation.' Well, I always point to the general provision, and that's the general purpose criterion, that if a chemical is used as a weapon, it is, it is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention," he said.

That said, Trump's order this month is likely to ratchet up international pressure to view fentanyl as an aerosolized weapon threat, he added.

"The President took a big stand here, and I think he made the right choice," he said. "You know, we used to hold these up in the Pentagon. It's a sugar packet, five grams or so (of fentanyl) that can kill hundreds of people if weaponized," he added. "And so, you know, the President pointed to numbers, small numbers in the executive order that can kill an individual if consumed. But if weaponized, it could kill a lot more."