[SWOYER] You’ve been in this position for a few months. I wanted to ask you a double-edged question. What do you believe is the biggest international, but also the biggest domestic drug threat to Americans? What should our neighbors be looking out for?

[CARTER] Two really great questions, very important questions. Before getting confirmed in January as the nation’s drug czar here at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, I actually was working for eight and a half months as an adviser to President Trump here at the office. So it has been a long year of putting together a national strategy based on the president’s priorities. And we’ve actually seen significant changes.

The biggest threats that we are facing right now are the precursor chemicals in our supply chain. Coming from as far away as China, we’re dealing with the CCP, India, the movement of those precursor chemicals coming into the Western Hem. 

Obviously, it is the drug cartels that are looking for them. They use these supplies for their narcotics, whether that is for fentanyl, for methamphetamine, for processing other narcotics that they try to move into the United States. We’ve shut them off at the border. We have completely sealed our border, nearly 2,000 miles with Mexico.

And so it gives our law enforcement officers an opportunity to really hyper-focus on fentanyl, on drugs, instead of just the human trafficking aspect that we were dealing with. But it is certainly the biggest issue for the United States right now, which is the reason why we’ve been in talks with China. I’ve been in talks in Mexico. We have been focused on cleaning out that supply chain. And that is a centerpiece to our national strategy for President Trump.

[SWOYER] About the type of international policies and discussions that you’re having within the Western Hemisphere, what have you noticed, and also any word with China? Have you spoken with them?

[CARTER] Yes. Two things. The Western Hem had been ignored for decades in a way that I always had believed, over my 25 years covering and reporting, especially on the cartels, I thought was a danger to U.S. national security. So our focus has been with the Trump administration to put the focus on the American people, right? America’s most important resource. And to protect the national security of our nation.

So when we brought it back to the Western Hemisphere, what we did notice was that our adversaries had already established themselves solidly here. Iran, China, Russia — moving their way through all of Central America. We saw it in South America. We saw it in Mexico. And operating with impunity, basically — allowing not only the cartels to operate with impunity, but those adversaries as well, establishing themselves in these nations.

So President Trump and his policy — our policy here at ONDCP — was to bring the focus back, just like DoW has done, to the Western Hem. And that means stopping our adversaries before they can establish themselves.

First, protecting the United States, then working on what we call the Donroe Doctrine, right? And ensuring that those adversaries do not operate in our hemisphere. And that is why you have seen such a dramatic change in policy. Look at what you saw under President Biden. It’s a completely different shift.

[SWOYER] When you talk about the Western Hemisphere, you and I spoke previously about the drug boat operation. You mentioned that it was helping really stop the flow of cocaine. How has the campaign changed smugglers’ thinking? For example, are you seeing them try to use different tactics? One thing one of my editors had noticed was that there might be an increase in timeshare fraud? Oil stealing? 

[CARTER] You’re dealing with not just nefarious organizations that operate in the most evil — I would say we’ve never seen anything quite like how CJNG, you know, Nuevo Generación, Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel — you know, you can even go back to the Cali Cartel in Colombia, you know, or Pablo Escobar. And what has happened in recent years is something that we have never seen. 

They have expanded. They operate as a company. They operate as multinational organizations, right? Just like companies would. And they diversify. They move their money into the most bizarre areas. And it’s to launder the drug money. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Whether that is in timeshare — like CJNG was famous for illegal timeshares — whether that’s jellyfish, exotic animals, oil.

[SWOYER] Like the selling of them?

[CARTER] Yeah, like the selling of jellyfish, or they’re going to launder their money that way — to sell it to, believe it or not, to China, interestingly enough.

[SWOYER] Wow.

[CARTER] So this is where we come into play, right? We’re not just looking at targeting the drugs that they are trying to poison our nation with. But we have to look at the entire beast, the entire octopus, right? And all of its tentacles. And we have to go after their financing. We have to go after their intelligence apparatus.

Alex, imagine the hundreds of billions of dollars, the trillions that were made under the Biden administration, right? Just alone. I’m not even talking about the years before that. Imagine what these cartels can do with that. They build armies. They build connections across the globe.