On March 28, President Donald Trump announced Sara Carter as his pick for “drug czar.” Carter, who will need to be confirmed by the Senate, has a background as a journalist and Fox News contributor, with no direct drug policy or public health experience.
“From Afghanistan to our Border, Sara’s relentless pursuit of Justice, especially in tackling the Fentanyl and Opioid Crisis, has exposed terrorists, drug lords, and sex traffickers,” Trump said in a statement. “As our next Drug Czar, Sara will lead the charge to protect our Nation, and save our children from the scourge of drugs.”
Carter’s website describes her as a “national and international award-winning investigative reporter whose stories have ranged from national security, terrorism, immigration and front line coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Besides her most recent role contributing to FOX News, she has written for outlets including the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner and USA Today. Her past reporting on the US-Mexico border has focused on undocumented immigration, secret tunnels and trafficking routes, and the involvement of Mexican officials in the drug trade.
“Drug czar” is the informal name for the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). According to the White House, the office “leads and coordinates the nation’s drug policy so that it improves the health and lives of the American people,” managing the National Drug Control Strategy and budget. The ONDCP works with 19 federal agencies and a $44 billion budget, “as part of a whole-of-government approach to addressing addiction and the overdose epidemic.”
Carter has frequently used her website to amplify fear-mongering and conspiracy-laden stories about fentanyl.
The office also distributes money and oversees the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program (HIDTA)—regional joint task forces involving federal, state and local police—and the Drug-Free Communities Program, which provides grants to prevent youth substance use.
In STAT News, Lev Facher notes Carter’s lack of any conventional qualifications for the role but describes how in recent years, her commentary has been “staunchly pro-Trump”—emphasizing the border and what she sees as the Biden administration’s failures around undocumented immigration and drug trafficking. She has also interviewed Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” on her podcast—dubbing him “our new Border God!”
Carter has frequently used her website to amplify fearmongering and conspiracy-laden stories about fentanyl—including of migrants arriving at the border addicted to fentanyl; school children eating gummy bears “laced with apparent fentanyl;” the Chinese Communist Party paying fentanyl producers; and one story titled, “Blood Money: New book shows how Bidens received $5M from Chinese criminal gang leader responsible for fentanyl pipeline to US.”
On cannabis, meanwhile, Carter has made mixed statements, as Marijuana Moment reports.
She’s said that “I don’t have any problem if it’s legalized and it’s monitored,” although, “I may have my own issues of how I feel about that.” She meanwhile described medical cannabis as “a fantastic way of handling … the illness and the side effects of the medication” for “people with cancer and other illnesses.”
Yet she has also reported on illicit cannabis growing operations, linking them to organized trafficking groups and the Chinese government, and calling for a crackdown.
“Zero experience managing agencies of any kind and zero subject-matter expertise … It is a measure of how unimportant real qualifications are for the Trump administration.”
Eric Sterling is the former director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a former board member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and previously served on the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, among many other drug policy affiliations. His past roles included assistant counsel to the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. A prolific author on drug policy and legal subjects, he has also taught at George Washington University and American University in Washington, DC.
“She has been a journalist and blogger who has done stories early in her career about Mexican drug trafficking cartels,” Sterling told Filter of Carter, “but she has zero experience or qualification for coordinating at the highest levels complex federal agencies; zero experience managing agencies of any kind and zero subject-matter expertise regarding drugs or law enforcement. It is a measure of how unimportant real qualifications are for the Trump administration.”
The office that Carter has been tapped to lead has a curious history. In 1982, none other than then-Senator Joe Biden sponsored a bill to create what would become the ONDCP, designed to enhance executive-branch leadership in coordinating anti-drug activities. But President Ronald Reagan —one of the biggest proponents of the United States’ drug war—vetoed the bill. It was opposed by the attorney general, who resented the idea of the office usurping the Department of Justice over drug policy. But the push for a “drug czar” office finally succeeded under Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush.
Sterling said that Barry McCaffrey, President Bill Clinton’s Drug Czar, was arguably the most high-profile and successful individual in the role—if “success” meant bringing more attention and power to the office. McCaffrey was most notably the “architect” of Clinton’s “Plan Colombia” to fund billions in military and direct aid to combat drug trafficking and left-wing guerrilla groups. But during President George W. Bush’s tenure, the office was sidelined.
“The attention began to flow out of [the ONDCP],” Sterling said. “In subsequent years it’s not had Cabinet-level status; it has not been seen as playing a key coordinating role.”
HIDTAs have emerged as one of the ONDCP’s key programs, bringing together federal, state and local police agencies on anti-drug operations in specific regions of the US. Currently there are 33 such initiatives nationwide, with additional “designated counties” in all 50 states. In 2021, the program had a budget of $290 million, and was assigned over 1,500 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents.
“She brings a certain qualification by virtue of holding the office to strengthen false claims regarding the role of immigrants and fentanyl smuggling.”
Sterling toured HIDTAs in the Baltimore and DC areas. “The initial concept was that in certain parts of the country, where larger-scale drug traffickers operate, these need a heightened focus by law enforcement agencies on an interactive basis,” he said. “A major tool it has is to coordinate multiple law enforcement drug raids—so you don’t have two different agencies staging raids at the same time against the same target, because they’re being investigated by the feds.”
If Carter is confirmed by the Senate, she could gain a powerful platform to bring the office in line with agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in boosting Trump’s assault on immigrants.
“She brings a certain qualification by virtue of holding the office to strengthen false claims regarding the role of immigrants and fentanyl smuggling,” Sterling said. He noted that federal government data show the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the US through legal ports of entry by US citizens—not by undocumented immigrants.
“[But] when the [drug czar] then makes a statement or a finding before a congressional committee that these things are how the president says they are, it gives the authority to amplify his message even if it’s inaccurate,” Sterling noted.
In his first term, Trump tried repeatedly to slash the ONDCP’s budget, and to move the HIDTA and Drug-Free Communities programs into the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, respectively. He also appointed a then-24 year old former campaign staffer as the deputy drug czar, suggesting he didn’t take the office’s functions seriously.
After President Biden took office, though he disappointed harm reductionists in many respects, he made history of a kind by using the terms “harm reduction” and “racial equity” for the first time in describing ONDCP priorities. Biden’s drug czar, Dr. Rahul Gupta, was similarly criticized by harm reductionists for a number of reasons. But in contrast to Trump’s pick, he was a physician who had served as West Virginia’s public health commissioner and helped lead a community health nonprofit.
“She can to some extent provide the White House imprimatur for reducing treatment, reversing harm reduction and public health measures, supporting DOGE.”
In Trump’s second term, there’s been a rapid, drastic turn away from policies based in evidence and public health, combined with Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Effficiency” (DOGE) hacking away at government spending. Carter is likely to play a supporting role in all this, according to Sterling.
“She can to some extent provide the White House imprimatur for reducing treatment, reversing harm reduction and public health measures, supporting any DOGE efforts trying to cut back on these programs,” he said. “She would be a voice that would likely support an increased [Department of Defense and military] to play more of a role on the border and in interdiction on the high seas and in the air.”
Sterling still wonders, however, if the recent “Signalgate” scandal might change the politics in a way that makes it harder for Carter to be confirmed as drug czar. The scandal has illustrated the consequences of placing unqualified people to serve in sensitive senior roles. Might even the Republican-controlled Senate think twice about Carter?
“This is sort of a challenge to the Senate—I dare you to challenge me, I dare you to take seriously your responsibility to advise and consent on presidential appointees on the basis of qualification,” Sterling said of Trump’s pick. “It may be interesting to see to what extent the Signalgate controversy and the incompetence demonstrated by the president’s national security team—who were controversial in their nominations for their lack of qualifications—[means] this nomination gets treated with potentially greater resistance.”
Photograph of Sara Carter in 2018 by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0
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