BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – President Trump has designated fentanyl and its core precursor closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.
On Dec. 15, 2025, he signed an executive order directing the attorney general to pursue criminal charges and more in fentanyl trafficking cases.
But it has no bearing on the Mountain State. The Beckley Police Department says they enforce state law, and it’s still illegal to be caught with fentanyl here.
“You go into a standard household in southern West Virginia and ask, ‘What is a weapon of mass destruction?’ I guarantee the first answer’s going to be a bomb,” said Captain Jason McDaniel.
According to the White House, the president is unleashing all available tools against cartels and foreign networks that turned fentanyl into the leading cause of death for 18-45-year-olds.
“May it change federal laws? I don’t enforce federal laws, so I haven’t looked at that, but it’s probably a sentencing guideline kind of deal,” McDaniel said. “They did this with crack cocaine when I started in law enforcement. That would be my guess — is what the president was after, the sentencing guidelines.”
We already had a nation of addicted people when Beckley Police say Fentanyl was infiltrating everything.
“If the guys found cocaine and tested it, it came back having fentanyl. If the guys brought back methamphetamine, it had fentanyl in it,” said McDaniel. “All of the heroin had fentanyl in it. Every drug out there for a period of time basically had fentanyl cut into it.”
The natural replacement for heroin was fentanyl. The problem: it’s 50 times stronger than heroin. Just two milligrams can be lethal for most people. According to the police captain, the border shutdown has made a difference.
“From what we’ve seen here in Beckley, West Virginia, it is working,” McDaniel said. “We’re seeing less fentanyl.”
The Beckley Police Department will keep enforcing the fentanyl state law, not as a WMD.
“Every day these guys are going to keep doing what they’re doing,” said McDaniel.
