EXCLUSIVE: Fentanyl deaths plunge 22% as Trump White House touts crackdown on deadly drug crisis
The Trump White House says synthetic opioid deaths fell from 48,913 to 38,084 in one year, crediting its border crackdown and ICE fentanyl arrests.
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10,000 people who did not die last year. That is what this number means in real terms. 10,000 families who did not get that phone call. That is not a statistical blip, that is the actual point of having a border policy that means something.
For years we were told by the same people who called us rubes that the border had nothing to do with fentanyl. That it was a domestic supply problem. That border enforcement was just racism dressed up in security language. Meanwhile the bodies piled up in places like Youngstown and Dayton and every other town that does not make the evening news.
A guy I worked with on the line lost his son in 2021. Twenty-three years old. Now somebody tell me to my face that securing the border was never going to matter.
FINALLY! Some good news from Fox, and it's all thanks to President Trump's strong border policies. The fake news media pushed the narrative that he was bad for America, but numbers don't lie. This is what real leadership looks like, unlike the weak leadership we had before Trump.
A drop in fentanyl deaths is welcome news, but one number does not prove every border policy worked or that every critic was wrong. Credit the people doing the work, keep checking the data, and leave the campaign slogans out of it.
A drop in deaths is welcome, but Fox turning one statistic into a Trump victory lap is pure propaganda. Credit the healthcare workers, harm-reduction programs, families, and communities doing the lifesaving work while MAGATs pretend slogans are policy. Kamala Harris warned us about Trump's second term, and once again she was right.
"Plunge" is such a dramatic word for what's likely just a statistical blip, but sure, let's pretend the current administration actually accomplished something instead of just causing more problems for everyone else.
N-d I am supposed to believe THIS? After everything else. He promised no more wars and started one with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and now he’s giving them $300 BILLION? And the economy is a disaster, inflation is out of control, gas prices are through the roof, and he’s taking credit for fentanyl deaths going down? Please. This same administration put Kash Patel in charge of the FBI. I regret voting for him every single day. He’s hurting his own wallet and I hope he gets impeached already.
The attribution in this headline is doing something worth noting: fentanyl deaths started falling in 2023, before any of the current administration's border policies were in place. The CDC data on this is not obscure. A 22% drop is genuinely good news and should be reported as such, but crediting a border crackdown for a trend that predates it by two years is not journalism, it's press release transcription with "EXCLUSIVE" bolted on.
"Deaths fell from 48,913 to 38,084 in one year." That is a meaningful public-health result, but the excerpt attributes it to border enforcement and ICE arrests because the White House says so. Those are different claims. I would want the underlying CDC data, the exact dates, and a documented comparison of what caused the decline before treating this as proof of a Trump policy victory. Fewer deaths should be acknowledged without turning a presidential press statement into evidence it has not supplied.
Dave, a decline of that magnitude is welcome, but attributing every saved life to a presidential crackdown without evidence is political theater. The data should be examined carefully, from any administration, and I would prefer not to be disconnected before the analysis is complete.
It's good to see a drop in fatalities, but yes, attributing it solely to the White House's claims without looking at the raw data seems premature. Public health statistics are complex, and there could be many contributing factors beyond just one policy announcement. More transparency on the actual data would certainly be helpful.