Does the 1986 Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, "authored" by U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, make it legal to "blow drug boats out of the water"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories reviewed the text of the law, and it says nothing about an unrestricted use of lethal force. An expert in maritime law confirmed to Lead Stories that the Act has no provisions that could be interpreted as permitting such actions. According to congressional records, Schumer co-sponsored a broader bill that included the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, not that specific piece of legislation as a standalone bill.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on December 18, 2025. It opened:
🚨BREAKING: The law that allows President Trump to take out drug boats was authored by none other than Chuck Schumer. 'This is the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act of 1986 authored by...Chuck Schumer. He wrote the law that makes it legal to blow drug boats out of the water.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/DerrickEvans4WV)
The entry on X shared a clip from the show called "Stinchfield Tonight" uploaded one day prior, on December 17, 2025. In the fragment reused in the post (begins at the 6:35 mark in the original recording archived here), the host says:
This in front of me, this is the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act of 1986, authored by a member of Congress in 1986 from the state of New York. His name? Chuck Schumer.
He wrote the law that passed almost unanimously that makes it legal to blow drug boats out of the water. It happened in the '80s a lot and the '90s a lot.
Go ahead. Look it up, folks. Chuck Schumer, the author of this bill that made what we're doing with Venezuelan drug boats fully legal.
We don't need permission from the rest of the world. Chuck Schumer gave us that in 1986.
Lead Stories reviewed the 1986 Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (archived here), which became law as part of a broader piece of legislation, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, H.R. 5484 (archived here). The document, however, says nothing about the unrestricted use of lethal force against suspected drug-carrying vessels in international waters.
Ian Ralby (archived here), an attorney and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Maritime Strategy who specializes in maritime security, told Lead Stories via email about the 1986 Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act:
No, it 100% does not make it legal 'to take out drug boats' by blowing them up in the fashion pursued by the Trump Administration. The MDLEA is a domestic law that allows the United States to engage in law enforcement operations against vessels suspected of drug trafficking outside the territory of the United States.
He continued:
... there is no area of law enforcement that would allow for extraterritorial and extrajudicial summary executions as have occurred in these several dozen incidents. None of these attacks can be construed as law enforcement operations.
That is not a comment on the overall legality of the operations, but neither the MDLEA nor any other U.S. or international law could be used to make these a lawful exercise of law enforcement powers.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (archived here) described in the post on X as the author of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, was not on the list of the bill's sponsors. He, however, was one of 301 co-sponsors of the bipartisan Anti-Drug Abuse Act that incorporated the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (archived here).
