Donald Trump’s first term as president last year, drug-related deaths in the US rose 30% – the largest annual increase ever recorded. According to Joe Biden during his final year as president. Preliminary estimates Last week, we reported a 27% decline in deaths.
In the face of that, Biden did a much better job of a drug war than Trump. But the conclusion praises the president for much more power than he must actually reduce substance abuse by attacking the supply of illegal drugs.
Recently Attorney General Pam Bondy I insisted The Trump administration “saved 258 million lives” by intercepting illegal fentanyl shipments. Bondi’s Risible Math broke new ground, but it reflected her boss’s strong belief in the drug war.
“I’m going to create a border,” Trump said. It was promised Currently in the 2016 campaign. “There’s no drugs in it… Trust me, I’ll solve the problem.”
In fact, Trump didn’t solve the problem. By the end of his first semester, Annual number Of the drug deaths, he was 44% higher than in the year before he took office.
That sorry record didn’t stop from playing cards prideduring his 2024 campaign, “We took the drug and fentanyl crisis head on” and “achieved the first reduction in overdose deaths in over 30 years.” He mentioned a 4% decline in 2018, but the death toll has since resumed its upward trend.
During his first coalition speech in 2022, Biden It was promised He “to defeat the opioid epidemic” and “stop the flow of illegal drugs.” However, we have reached an annual number of deaths due to overdose Record height Nearly 108,000 on his watch.
Still, if Trump can claim credit for 4% decline in 2018, it seems fair to praise Biden. Similar drops (3%) A much larger decrease in 2023 and 2024. Similarly, if Biden is responsible for allowing drug deaths to reach the highest level ever seen, the same logic denies Trump, who primarily sided the unprecedented jump seen in 2020.
In both cases, something could be wrong with that logic of ignoring greater power in the workplace. Experts when it was revealed that overdoses had risen dramatically in 2020 I guessed It had something to do with the social and economic disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it. This is an impression confirmed by subsequent research.
Research in 2024 Found “Volatile drug use during the Covid-19 pandemic was common and was driven by structural vulnerability and appeared to be linked to an increased risk of overdose.” Another study They concluded that “policies restricting face-to-face activities have increased significantly,” which was published in the same year.
In the case of pandemic-related confusion I drove Overdose spikes in 2020, returning to normal life Pragmatic explanation In the subsequent decline, the death toll was about 14% higher than last year. Proposed Other possible factors, including the wide availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist that rapidly reverses overdose.
Dasgupta et al. The solution Trump and Biden liked, reflecting a long line of politicians, viewed as “impossible” to try to block drug supply. They said the explanation contradicts the decline in retail prices they observed.
Far from reducing drug-related harm, the ban exacerbates it by creating a black market where drug composition is very diverse and promoting the sale of particularly potent substances such as fentanyl, which are prone to smuggling. Prescription opioid crackdowns expanded these risks by encouraging non-medical users to drive and replace drugs that have been reliably administered with much more dangerous alternatives.
Both Biden and Trump supported these policies, so they both deserve to blame the expected opposite outcome.
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