Boat hits won’t end fentanyl scourge
Robert Kelly, USCG (Ret.), & Neal Urwitz
Washington Times
Dec. 8, 2025
Made-for-TV missile strikes miss the mark
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.
Robert Kelly, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and served in the White House under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush on counternarcotics issues. Neal Urwitz is the CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies and served as a speechwriter and adviser to the Secretary of the Navy from 2021 to 2023.
