DAVID MARCUS: Secure border brings plummeting overdose deaths, but don't expect Trump to get credit
These days, it seems like the hardest thing to come across in the United States of America is something that all of us can celebrate as unambiguous good news. Well, you would think the steady and substantial decrease in drug overdoses over the past two years would fit the bill..
The only problem for the legacy news media is how to tell this happy story without giving any credit to President Donald Trump.
In 2022, under the disastrous Biden administration, opioid overdose deaths peaked at a shocking 110,000. In 2025 under Trump, that number was an estimated 73,000. It is true that the decline began during Biden's final year in office, once the people actually running the country acknowledged that border security was an election-year issue. But last year's number was down 21% from Biden’s last year in office.
A drop of 37,000 this year from the 2022 annual peak is truly a miracle. For perspective, 58,220 American lives were lost in the Vietnam War. Trust me, to the extent you hear this good news at all, it will be framed as a trend begun by Grandpa Joe.
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That's like giving a serial arsonist credit for stubbing out one lit cigarette.
Much of Biden’s final year in office is reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s joke about kindly grandparents who were brutal to their own kids, "You are looking at an old person trying to get into heaven," he quipped. In Biden’s case, just replace heaven with getting reelected.
Whatever the motivation, we should be happy and grateful that the previous administration oversaw tens of thousands of fewer tragic overdose deaths, even if it took them a while, and we should be overjoyed that, under Trump, that number is diving even lower.
Frankly, there are approximately as many supposed explanations for this drop in overdoses as there are experts to proffer them. Some credit new regulations around fentanyl in China, others the widespread availability of anti-overdose drugs like Naloxone, still others credit treatment programs.
What you hear less about are the major interdiction efforts by the Trump administration. In one week-long operational surge in September of last year, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized 200 pounds of fentanyl powder from the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, more than enough to kill everyone in most American states.
Add to this the fact that for the first time, maybe ever, the U.S. has a southern border that doesn’t resemble a spaghetti strainer leaking drugs and the illegal immigrants who trade in them.
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The Trump administration has brought inflation under control, and overseen an increase in real wages that may well be walking many at-risk Americans off of the bridge of despair and into purposeful lives.
One also ought not whistle past the upswing in church attendance, especially among the young, when accounting for lowered overdose deaths. Religion has often been called "the opiate of the masses," a phrase borrowed from Karl Marx, for a reason. Well, it certainly beats real opioid addiction.
All of these positive trends under Trump, added up, have created a situation where some doctors say they have gone from seeing 10 to 12 overdoses a day to only one or two.
Whether it is through his secure border, his attacks on Venezuelan drug-running boats or even his trade negotiations with China, Trump has prioritized stemming the flow of deadly drugs into our nation, and it's working.
Politics, especially these days, can seem like a game show. Who is putting points on the board? What do the polls say? Where are the prediction markets?
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But politics is much more than that, and because of Trump’s sound policies, tens of thousands of Americans enjoyed the holidays with their families, who otherwise would have been represented by a mournful empty chair.
The inability, or the unwillingness, of the legacy news media to celebrate any accomplishment by Trump, even one as unalloyed as saving lives from overdoses, remains the greatest and most obvious stain on its crumbling credibility.
If the administration can keep this trend going, if fewer and fewer of our brothers and sisters succumb to the slow death of opioids, then whether Trump gets the credit or not, it will be a cause for great joy. Actually, it already is.