During his second term, Trump has leveraged the struggle against illegal drug trafficking to oust Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and to intimidate other nations in the region with the prospect of military intervention.
Trump praised Carter’s reporting on the illicit drug trade when he appointed her to the position last March.
“My work in the frontlines wasn’t just about telling stories, it was about mapping the enemy,” Carter told senators in the Judiciary Committee during her September nomination hearing. She touted her work covering drug cartels and said Trump’s border crackdown reduced the flow of drugs like fentanyl into the United States. That crackdown also reduced the flow of U.S. weapons into Mexico, she argued, which often end up in cartels’ possession.
“I have seen these predatory criminal empires operate with impunity in our hemisphere. That impunity ends now,” Carter told senators. “This is not just a public health crisis, it’s a chemical war being waged against the American people.”
Carter, as the head of ONDCP, will be instrumental in supervising federal policy and funding concerning drug trafficking, substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery.
🚨JUST IN🌿
Sara A. Carter Bailey has been confirmed as Director of National Drug Control Policy. Congrats! 👏$MSOS $TLRY $CGC pic.twitter.com/lA6PvAQABh
— HanfTicker (@HanfTicker) January 6, 2026
“Thank you @realDonaldTrump for your confidence and faith in me to lead the charge to end the scourge of illegal drugs that have killed millions of Americans and have robbed too many families of their children. I will work tirelessly to support your vision to put every Narco-terrorist on notice, letting them know their days of killing Americans are over,” Carter wrote on X.
“I, along with our team @ONDCP will work everyday to put American families first and to build a safer healthier America, free of illicit drugs. We will provide every American with the tools and resources to protect themselves and their children from drug addiction- we’re in this fight together, we can’t win this alone,” Carter added.
Carter said that while she isn’t “a doctor, a general or a lawyer,” she is a “more than two-decade investigative journalist who was on the ground in the field, witnessing firsthand what these cartels and what these terrorist organizations have not only done to our nation and to the rest of the world, but to our children.”
While her Senate testimony largely focused on stopping the supply of drugs by aggressive action against foreign drug cartels, Carter also pointed to reducing domestic demand for drugs “through robust prevention, treatment and recovery support.”
She said educators, faith and community leaders and law enforcement need to work together to prevent drug use by creating a “culture of resilience, where staying drug-free is the norm.”
The Judiciary Committee progressed Carter’s nomination with a 12-10 partisan vote in October.
Carter’s confirmation follows Trump’s signing of an executive order instructing the Justice Department to expedite initiatives aimed at broadening access to marijuana for medicinal use.
Carter will not oversee the rescheduling process of the drug essential for broader accessibility to medical researchers and patients; however, she may significantly impact medical marijuana policy.
Though she has previously championed cannabis for “medicinal purposes and medical reasons,” Carter did not confirm whether she’d work to help legalize medical marijuana on the federal level in her written response to a follow-up question from Judiciary Committee members after her nomination hearing.
Instead, Carter wrote that she’d “comply with all federal laws” and “ensure an examination of all the facts and evidence as part of any scheduling or policy actions.”
