Is Venezuela flooding the US with drugs?
Counternarcotic experts say that Venezuela is a relatively minor player in global drug trafficking, acting as a transit country through which drugs produced elsewhere are smuggled.
Its neighbour, Colombia, is the world's largest producer of cocaine but most of it is thought to enter the US by other routes, not via Venezuela.
According to a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report from 2020, almost three quarters of the cocaine reaching the US is estimated to be trafficked via the Pacific with just a small percentage coming via fast boats in the Caribbean.
While most of the early strikes the US has carried out were in the Caribbean, more recent ones have focused on the Pacific.
In September, Trump told US military leaders that the boats targeted "are stacked up with bags of white powder that's mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too".
Fentanyl is a synthetic drug which is 50 times more potent than heroin and has become the main drug responsible for opioid overdose deaths in the US.
On 15 December, Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction", arguing that it was "closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic".
However, fentanyl is produced mainly in Mexico and reaches the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border.
Venezuela is not mentioned as a country of origin for fentanyl smuggled into the US in the DEA's
2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.