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- Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to unleash the "fury and might" of the US on Mexico's cartels.
- Graham says the US needs to destroy cartels because too many Americans have died of fentanyl overdoses.
- He clarified that he isn't asking the US Army to "invade Mexico."
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham wants the US to unleash its "fury and might" on Mexico's cartels.
"We're going to destroy their business model and their lifestyle because our national security and the security of the United States as a whole depends on us taking decisive action," Graham said at a press conference on Wednesday with Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy.
Graham said he plans to introduce bipartisan legislation in the coming days, to designate the drug cartels as terrorist organizations. He also said he wants to introduce legislation authorizing the US military to use force to destroy Mexican drug labs.
Graham clarified that he isn't asking for the US Army to launch a military attack on Mexico.
"Not to invade Mexico, not to shoot Mexican airplanes down, but to destroy drug labs that are poisoning Americans," he said.
Graham said he wants to dismantle the Mexican cartels because of the number of people in the US who have died from fentanyl overdoses.
"I think John and I believe that if there were an ISIS or Al Qaeda cell in Mexico that lobbed a rocket into Texas, we would wipe them off the planet. They are doing that times thousands and our response is inadequate," Graham added.
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin. The majority of the 107,500 lethal drug overdoses recorded in the US in the 12 months ending August 2022 were linked to fentanyl, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In February, the Arizona police found around 30 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration said the drug bust came after a three-year investigation into Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
A spokesman for Graham did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.