Nominee for DEA Administrator Promises Urgent Push on Fentanyl, Calls for International and Domestic Tools

Terrence Cole, President Trump’s nominee to be administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that if confirmed he would make combating the fentanyl crisis the DEA’s “number 1 priority.” He said the United States loses nearly 300 people daily to drug poisonings and argued that the response must use law enforcement, intelligence, financial sanctions and diplomacy to target cartels and their networks.

Cole, a former DEA special agent with decades of domestic and overseas experience and a recent Virginia secretary of public safety and homeland security, described cartel operations in Mexico and the influence of transnational networks he said involve actors in China and, more recently, Canada. “These cartels have demonstrated an extraordinary ability to adapt, evolve, and relocate their operations,” he said, adding that designating cartels such as Sinaloa and CJNG as foreign terrorist organizations “is a necessary and overdue step in this fight.”

The nominee urged rebuilding investigative capacity in Mexico akin to past U.S. efforts in Colombia: “We need to build capacity, similar to…