US vice-president JD Vance has addressed the apparent disconnect between the Trump administration’s military operations in Venezuela and justifications based in part of an effort to curb the trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the US. In a post on X on Sunday, Vance said he wanted to address claims that Venezuela “has nothing to do with drugs because most of the fentanyl comes from elsewhere”.“First off, fentanyl isn’t the only drug in the world and there is still fentanyl coming from Venezuela (or at least there was). Second, cocaine, which is the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela, is a profit center for all of the Latin America cartels,” he wrote. “If you cut out the money from cocaine (or even reduce it) you substantially weaken the cartels overall.
