Pam Bondi Claims Trump Saved 75% of Americans From a Fentanyl Overdose

The Trump medication mightiness person to double-check its math. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi ludicrously claimed that President Donald Trump had saved 75% of the American colonisation from fentanyl since taking office.

Bondi made the assertion during a Cabinet gathering connected Wednesday, which was themed astir celebrating Trump’s archetypal 100 days successful office. Bondi archetypal boasted astir the administration’s efforts successful removing fentanyl from the achromatic market, past piled connected a whopping heap of melodramatic flourish.

“Since you person been successful office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies person seized much than 22 cardinal fentanyl pills—3,400 kilos of fentanyl…which saved—are you acceptable for this, media?—258 cardinal lives,” she stated.

Remarkably, Bondi’s numbers are really a revision to her arsenic moronic assertion made a time earlier connected a X post, successful which she said that Trump had saved implicit 119 cardinal Americans from fentanyl.

Drug overdoses are, of course, a precise existent nationalist wellness contented successful the U.S. Over the past decade, overdose deaths person steadily risen, acknowledgment successful ample portion to the accrued organisation and usage of synthetic opioids similar fentanyl. Fentanyl is genuinely much unsafe than different opioids similar heroin due to the fact that it’s much potent and tin much easy origin a fatal overdose. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl—around a twelve grains of brackish worth—can perchance beryllium lethal.

To beryllium somewhat just to Bondi, erstwhile administrations person performed akin calculations. Last year, for instance, the Biden-led Department of Justice reported that the magnitude of fentanyl it seized successful 2023 was the equivalent of implicit 386 cardinal deadly doses. But there’s a notable quality betwixt citing a circumstantial fig of imaginable fentanyl deaths to exemplify its information and claiming that Trump straight saved that galore lives.

For starters, obscurity adjacent that galore Americans really dice from fentanyl. Slightly implicit 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose successful 2023, with astir 70% of these deaths tied to fentanyl. And to constituent retired the blatantly obvious, 258 cardinal Americans aren’t regularly utilizing fentanyl. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, astir 10 cardinal Americans annually misuse opioids successful general.

Bondi’s iffy mathematics is infuriating for different reason. Overdose deaths successful America person yet started to decline implicit the past 2 years, aft years of continued increase. But that unsteady advancement is already being threatened by the Trump administration.

In a preliminary fund proposal, for instance, the White House has sought to chopped national funding to astir a twelve programs related to substance maltreatment prevention and treatment, including programs that administer naloxone—the highly effectual overdose reversal treatment. The medication has besides already tried to cancel $11 cardinal successful grants approved during the covid-19 pandemic, galore of which went to mental wellness and substance maltreatment programs. And Trump, nether the proposal of DOGE, has started to teardrop down the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—the national bureau astir straight liable for responding to the cause overdose crisis. As overmuch arsenic 50% of jobs wrong SAMHSA are expected to beryllium eliminated, and the bureau itself whitethorn soon beryllium shuttered completely arsenic portion of a “restructuring.”

Trump surely hasn’t saved 258 cardinal Americans from fentanyl. And his administration’s actions could precise good pb to much overdose deaths successful the coming months and years.