The Fentanyl Crisis

To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fentanyl crisis is caused by illegal immigrants coming across the border and he’s going to fix it with stricter border and immigration controls. Josh Levs in a March 27 article for The Contrarian claims both those statements are a lie.

The Biden administration had made progress on fentanyl and it got worse under Trump, but you would not know that listening to most media reports.

Trump’s penchant for exaggeration comes in to play too. “We lose 300,000 people a year to fentanyl” he’s fond of claiming. In 2023 drug overdose was responsible for 107,000 deaths with nearly 70% of those from fentanyl. So closer to 74,000. Significantly less than 300,000 but still, a lot of unnecessary deaths.

The vast majority of drugs seized at the border are at regular border crossings, not in between, so not from illegal immigrants and not because of an “open border”. About 80% of convicted fentanyl traffickers are American citizens; 20% are visitors or recent immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Fentanyl use went up during Trump’s first term. From 52,900 deaths in the last 12 months of Obama’s administration to 94,788 for the last 12 months of Trump’s first term. It continued to rise during Biden’s first two years to 107,000 and 109,745, then dropped to 105,480 in his third year and to 82,000 by October of 2024 (the last month data was available for the study quoted).

The CDC reported that the 12 months ending in September 2024 was a nearly 24% drop in overdose deaths. Allison Arwady, Director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, commented:

“It is unprecedented to see predicted overdose deaths drop by more than 27,000 over a single year. That’s more than 70 lives saved per day. CDC’s public health investments, our improved data and laboratory systems for overdose response … mean that we are more rapidly identifying emerging drug threats and supporting public health prevention and response activities in communities across America.”

The Biden administration was working on cutting demand as well as supply through things like addiction treatments, mental health support, research and education programs. Things that the Trump administration are likely to cut as “wasteful”, if they haven’t already. I have no doubt that the trend will reverse and overdose deaths will start increasing again under this regime.

Trump isn’t interested in facts such as these. He doesn’t’ even really care about the people dying from a drug overdose. For Donald Trump the fentanyl crisis is just a talking point with which to attack immigrants, Mexico and Canada. And also his predecessor, Sleepy Joe Biden, and his “open border”.

 

Sources:

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/red-america-needs-the-truth-on-trumps

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/2025-cdc-reports-decline-in-us-drug-overdose-deaths.html