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

The Trump administration may need to double-check its math. This week, Lawyer Common Pam Bondi ludicrously claimed that President Donald Trump had saved 75% of the American inhabitants from fentanyl since taking workplace.

Bondi made the declare throughout a Cupboard assembly on Wednesday, which was themed round celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in workplace. Bondi first boasted in regards to the administration’s efforts in eradicating fentanyl from the black market, then piled on a whopping heap of dramatic flourish.

“Since you may have been in workplace, President Trump, your DOJ companies have seized greater than 22 million fentanyl capsules—3,400 kilos of fentanyl…which saved—are you prepared for this, media?—258 million lives,” she said.

Remarkably, Bondi’s numbers are literally a revision to her equally moronic declare made a day earlier on a X put up, wherein she said that Trump had saved over 119 million People from fentanyl.

Drug overdoses are, after all, a really actual public well being problem within the U.S. Over the previous decade, overdose deaths have steadily risen, thanks largely to the elevated distribution and use of artificial opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl is genuinely extra harmful than different opioids like heroin as a result of it’s stronger and might extra simply trigger a deadly overdose. Simply two milligrams of fentanyl—round a dozen grains of salt value—can probably be deadly.

To be considerably truthful to Bondi, earlier administrations have carried out comparable calculations. Final yr, for example, the Biden-led Division of Justice reported that the quantity of fentanyl it seized in 2023 was the equal of over 386 million lethal doses. However there’s a notable distinction between citing a selected variety of potential fentanyl deaths as an instance its hazard and claiming that Trump straight saved that many lives.

For starters, nowhere close to that many People truly die from fentanyl. Barely over 100,000 People died from a drug overdose in 2023, with round 70% of those deaths tied to fentanyl. And to level out the blatantly apparent, 258 million People aren’t repeatedly utilizing fentanyl. In accordance with the Nationwide Middle for Drug Abuse Statistics, round 10 million People yearly misuse opioids generally.

Bondi’s iffy math is infuriating for one more motive. Overdose deaths in America have lastly started to decline over the previous two years, after years of continued improve. However that unsteady progress is already being threatened by the Trump administration.

In a preliminary price range proposal, for example, the White Home has sought to cut federal funding to a couple of dozen applications associated to substance abuse prevention and therapy, together with applications that distribute naloxone—the extremely efficient overdose reversal therapy. The administration has additionally already tried to cancel $11 billion in grants authorized in the course of the covid-19 pandemic, lots of which went to mental health and substance abuse programs. And Trump, below the recommendation of DOGE, has started to tear down the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Companies Administration (SAMHSA)—the federal company most straight chargeable for responding to the drug overdose disaster. As a lot as 50% of jobs inside SAMHSA are anticipated to be eradicated, and the company itself might quickly be shuttered completely as a part of a “restructuring.”

Trump definitely hasn’t saved 258 million People from fentanyl. And his administration’s actions might very effectively result in extra overdose deaths within the coming months and years.