The Trump administration might have to double-check its math. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi ludicrously claimed that President Donald Trump had saved 75% of the American population from fentanyl since taking office.
Bondi made the claim during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, which was themed around celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in office. Bondi first boasted about the administration’s efforts in removing fentanyl from the black market, then piled on a whopping heap of dramatic flourish.
“Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills—3,400 kilos of fentanyl…which saved—are you ready for this, media?—258 million lives,” she stated.
Remarkably, Bondi’s numbers are actually a revision to her equally moronic claim made a day earlier on a X post, in which she said that Trump had saved over 119 million Americans from fentanyl.
Drug overdoses are, of course, a very real public health issue in the U.S. Over the past decade, overdose deaths have steadily risen, thanks in large part to the increased distribution and use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl is genuinely more dangerous than other opioids like heroin because it’s more potent and can more easily cause a fatal overdose. Just two milligrams of fentanyl—around a dozen grains of salt worth—can potentially be lethal.
To be somewhat fair to Bondi, previous administrations have performed similar calculations. Last year, for instance, the Biden-led Department of Justice reported that the amount of fentanyl it seized in 2023 was the equivalent of over 386 million deadly doses. But there’s a notable difference between citing a specific number of potential fentanyl deaths to illustrate its danger and claiming that Trump directly saved that many lives.
For starters, nowhere near that many Americans actually die from fentanyl. Slightly over 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2023, with around 70% of these deaths tied to fentanyl. And to point out the blatantly obvious, 258 million Americans aren’t regularly using fentanyl. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, around 10 million Americans annually misuse opioids in general.
Bondi’s iffy math is infuriating for another reason. Overdose deaths in America have finally started to decline over the past two years, after years of continued increase. But that unsteady progress is already being threatened by the Trump administration.
In a preliminary budget proposal, for instance, the White House has sought to cut federal funding to about a dozen programs related to substance abuse prevention and treatment, including programs that distribute naloxone—the highly effective overdose reversal treatment. The administration has also already tried to cancel $11 billion in grants approved during the covid-19 pandemic, many of which went to mental health and substance abuse programs. And Trump, under the advice of DOGE, has started to tear down the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—the federal agency most directly responsible for responding to the drug overdose crisis. As much as 50% of jobs within SAMHSA are expected to be eliminated, and the agency itself may soon be shuttered completely as part of a “restructuring.”
Trump certainly hasn’t saved 258 million Americans from fentanyl. And his administration’s actions could very well lead to more overdose deaths in the coming months and years.
English (US) ·