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    STAT debunks AG Bondi’s drug bust claims

    By Robyn Oster
    May 2025

    Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that drug busts during the first 100 days of the Trump administration had saved 119 million lives. She soon issued a correction, announcing that the true figure was more than twice as high – 258 million.

    • The main point: The claim is implausible on many levels.

    Here’s why:

    1. Nowhere near 258 million Americans use drugs that would even potentially contain fentanyl.
    2. Most fentanyl is consumed by a tiny subset of Americans with much higher tolerances than the 2-mg dose that officials say could cause an overdose.
    3. Even when overdoses do occur, many can be reversed using naloxone and other techniques.
    4. By Bondi’s logic, if law enforcement continued to seize fentanyl at the same rate for another month or so, the Trump administration could claim credit for saving every single American from a fatal drug overdose.

    The bigger meaning: Bondi’s remarks underscore the administration’s emphasis on enforcement as the response to the overdose crisis.

    • Law enforcement commonly quantifies drug busts by the maximum number of people the substances could potentially have killed — i.e., a seizure of x potentially lethal doses.
    • But: Bondi’s comments escalate the rhetoric. She was not just claiming that the drugs had the potency, hypothetically, to kill more than two-thirds of the country’s population; she was arguing that the drug busts actually saved the lives of 258 million people.