In the waters off the Caribbean, the United States military has been blowing small boats out of the water – boats they say are carrying drugs.

Now, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth is facing questions about whether his strike orders are illegal, and US President Donald Trump is doubling down, threatening strikes on Venezuelan soil.

It’s the latest escalation in Trump’s self-declared war on fentanyl – a campaign that casts foreign traffickers as the villains behind America’s overdose crisis.

But the origin of America’s fentanyl problem lies much closer to home, inside the country’s own pharmaceutical industry.

Today, drug historian at the University of Buffalo, Professor David Herzberg, on how the fentanyl crisis really started and why the war to stop it could make everything worse.

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