3/6 WMDs are defined not by how many people they kill, but by how they kill them. Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons are grouped because they impose indiscriminate, large-scale harm through a single act of hostile deployment.
4/6 CBRNs are weapons in both design and use. Their deployment signals escalation across clear red lines.
Fentanyl does not operate this way, even at its most devastating. It is not deployed. There is no moment of dispersal, no targeting logic, no point at which harm becomes unavoidable by design.
5/6 Mass death emerges through aggregation, not weaponization. This remains true even in the context of hybrid warfare.
Weapons of mass destruction sit at the most extreme end of warfare, while hybrid warfare operates by staying deliberately below that level of visibility and escalation.
6/6 Reclassification carries risks. Expanding WMD authorities into drug enforcement increases the risk of large-scale violence through conventional means by making escalation a justifiable response to a problem newly framed as a weapon of mass destruction.