This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 25th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown. Some members of Congress, perhaps not

content with current efforts to fight the scourge of fentanyl, want to declare

cartels foreign terrorist organizations and authorize the use of force in our

neighbor to the south, Mexico. Cato's Justin Logan says the idea poses tremendous risks with not much

promise of a return. A lot of people across the southern border and in various states

in the United States say fentanyl is a scourge.

And to the extent that these drugs cross the southern border,

they want a special emphasis on who's doing this, never mind the evidence that it's

mostly Americans who are bringing that particular drug into the United States.

But some members of Congress want to go a step further

and designate the cartels that are facilitating drug

imports into the United States as terrorist organizations. How reasonable is that?

Well, it's important to point out at the outset that these proposals, and there are two separate proposals.

There's one proposal to designate a number of Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist

organizations or FTOs.

And the advocates of this approach say,

we're just trying to seize cartel assets, right?

This gives us tools to go after funds

that the cartels need to operate. But at the same time you hear

for example Senator Lindsey Graham talking about the FTO designation say quote

we need to put our military into the game to stop this.

...