Legal professional Common Pam Bondi was widely mocked for bragging, throughout a Cabinet meeting this week, that the Trump administration had “saved…258 million lives” by intercepting shipments of illicit fentanyl. That risible declare went a step past the extra common drug-warrior speaking factors, which are inclined to concentrate on the amount of medicine seized and their purported “road worth.” However none of those is a significant metric of success within the struggle on medication, which ostensibly goals to cut back the hurt brought on by substance abuse however really magnifies it, as mirrored in Bondi’s report as lawyer common of Florida.
First a phrase about Bondi’s math. Throughout President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in workplace, she stated, the federal authorities had seized “greater than 22 million fentanyl drugs” and “3,400 kilos of fentanyl.” In accordance with the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2 milligrams of fentanyl is a probably deadly dose, which implies 3,400 kilograms (if pure) might theoretically kill 1.7 billion folks. So one might argue that Bondi really understated the Trump administration’s accomplishment: It didn’t merely save 75 p.c of the U.S. inhabitants; it saved the complete inhabitants 5 instances over.
In February, the White Home carried out the same calculation. Final fiscal 12 months, it said, U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) “apprehended greater than 21,000 kilos of fentanyl at our borders, sufficient fentanyl to kill greater than 4 billion folks.” The mathematics checks out! Twenty-one thousand kilos is 9,525,440 grams, or about 4.8 billion deadly doses.
As Purpose‘s Joe Lancaster notes, Bondi relied on a unique methodology in arriving at her estimate, adjusting these 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl based mostly on the “present purity stage.” She thus averted claiming that the Trump administration had saved 1.7 billion American lives, which might have been much more patently ridiculous than claiming it had saved a mere 258 million.
Bondi’s most blatant mistake is equating potential overdoses with precise overdoses: She assumes that 258 million opioid-naive folks would every have consumed two milligrams of fentanyl in a single sitting. However Bondi additionally erroneously assumes that seizing 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl is identical as decreasing U.S. fentanyl consumption by that quantity.
That’s clearly not true. Prohibition permits drug traffickers to earn a hefty threat premium, which provides them a powerful incentive to search out methods round any boundaries the federal government manages to erect. Given all of the locations the place medication could be produced and all of the methods they are often smuggled, it’s not attainable to “minimize off the stream,” as politicians have been vainly promising to do for greater than a century. Probably the most they will realistically hope to perform by interdiction is increased retail costs ensuing from elevated prices imposed on drug traffickers.
That technique is complicated by the truth that unlawful medication purchase most of their worth near the buyer. The price of changing destroyed crops and seized shipments is due to this fact comparatively small, a tiny fraction of the “road worth” trumpeted by regulation enforcement businesses. As you get nearer to the retail stage, the substitute price rises, however the quantity that may be seized at one time falls.
These challenges—which are compounded within the case of fentanyl, a extremely potent drug that may be transported or shipped in small packages containing many doses—clarify why interdiction by no means appears to have a major and lasting impression on retail costs. From 1981 to 2012, in accordance with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the typical, inflation-adjusted retail worth for a pure gram of heroin fell by 86 p.c. Throughout the identical interval, the typical retail worth for cocaine and methamphetamine fell by 75 p.c and 72 p.c, respectively. In 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that methamphetamine’s “purity and efficiency stay excessive whereas costs stay low,” that “availability of cocaine all through the US stays regular,” and that “availability and use of low-cost and extremely potent fentanyl has elevated.”
Bondi lives in a unique world—one the place the federal government seizes 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl and thereby reduces the availability out there to customers by that quantity, stopping 258 million overdose deaths that in any other case would have occurred. Her declare not solely beggars perception; it contradicts Trump’s critique of the Biden administration’s anti-drug report.
“Medication are pouring in at ranges by no means seen earlier than,” Trump said on Meet the Press in December. “They’re simply pouring in. We won’t have open borders.”
CBP fentanyl seizures rose from 7,330 kilos in 2020 to greater than 25,000 kilos in 2023. That pattern, Trump assumed, was not a triumph for interdiction. Slightly, it signaled a rise in provide, which he blamed on President Joe Biden’s weak border insurance policies. That argument relied on the lifelike assumption that “federal officers are solely capable of seize a fraction of the fentanyl smuggled throughout the southern border,” because the White Home conceded in February.
Now that Trump is in cost, nonetheless, a big quantity of fentanyl seizures is an indication of success moderately than failure, as a result of seizing extra fentanyl means stopping extra overdoses. By Bondi’s logic, the Biden administration saved 860 million American lives in 2023 alone.
Bondi’s unjustified religion within the struggle on medication blinds her to the methods during which prohibition makes drug use extra harmful. “Youngsters are dying each day as a result of they’re taking this junk laced with one thing else,” she stated throughout the Cupboard assembly. “They do not know what they’re taking. They assume they’re shopping for a Tylenol or an Adderall [or] a Xanax, and it is laced with fentanyl, they usually’re dropping lifeless.”
Prohibition is the explanation drug customers “do not know what they’re taking.” In a authorized market, customers know the contents and focus of, say, a bottle of whiskey. In a black market, against this, drug composition is very variable and unpredictable, which dramatically will increase the chance of probably deadly errors.
That drawback is inherent in prohibition, and stepped-up enforcement of prohibition makes it worse. When she was Florida’s lawyer common, for instance, Bondi garnered reward for cracking down on “capsule mills.” However that technique predictably drove nonmedical opioid customers towards black-market options, changing reliably dosed prescription drugs with merchandise of unknown high quality and purity. In accordance with data from the Florida Division of Well being, the age-adjusted fee of “deaths from drug poisoning” in that state practically doubled throughout Bondi’s eight years in workplace, and it continued rising after she left. If that is success, what would failure appear to be?
