Attorney General Pam Bondi briefly shared — and then quickly deleted — a graph purporting to show dramatic progress in reducing drug overdose deaths, after critics pointed out that the data undercut her attempt to credit the Trump administration and instead highlighted gains made while President Joe Biden was in office.
The graph, which tracked overdose deaths nationwide from October 2015 through October 2024, showed a familiar and grim arc. Deaths surged sharply beginning in 2015 with the rise of fentanyl, climbed further during the late 2010s, and spiked just before the COVID-19 pandemic during President Donald Trump’s first term. After largely plateauing in 2022 and 2023, the data revealed a sharp and sustained decline from October 2023 to October 2024 — a period that fell squarely under Biden’s presidency.
The chart came from a June 2025 study published in Journal of the American Medical Association, whose authors noted that the deceleration in overdose deaths during Biden’s final year in office was nearly twice the magnitude of the surge seen between 2019 and 2021.
Bondi nonetheless framed the data as proof of Trump-era success. In her now-deleted post, she claimed the drop in deaths reflected border enforcement, fentanyl seizures, and aggressive prosecutions under Trump, declaring that “elections have consequences” and asserting that enforcing Trump’s policies was “saving American lives.”
The problem, as social media users quickly noticed, was that the graph’s title and endpoint made clear it did not include Trump’s current term at all. The decline Bondi was celebrating occurred before he returned to office.
Among those pointing out the discrepancy was Rep. Ted Lieu, who responded by thanking Bondi for inadvertently giving Biden credit. After Bondi deleted the post, Lieu shared a screenshot, mocking the attempt to rewrite the timeline and noting that the data explicitly ended in October 2024.
Health experts say the episode underscores a larger concern: that the progress reflected in the data may already be at risk. The decline in overdose deaths — roughly 27 percent by the end of Biden’s term — coincided with expanded treatment access, harm-reduction strategies, and federal investment in substance abuse programs.
Those investments have since been rolled back. Trump’s signature spending bill cut roughly $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, according to reporting earlier this year. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also overseen mass layoffs at the agency and announced plans to dissolve it entirely, moves that public health professionals warn could reverse recent gains.
At the same time, Trump has leaned heavily on the drug epidemic as justification for hardline actions abroad, including deadly military operations targeting small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and strikes on infrastructure in Venezuela. He has also cited fentanyl as a rationale for sweeping tariffs imposed on dozens of U.S. trade partners.
Critics argue that the administration’s tough-on-narco-terrorists rhetoric is further undermined by Trump’s record on clemency. During his first term, he granted pardons or commutations to nearly 90 people convicted of drug-related crimes. Since returning to office in January, he has freed at least 10 more, including former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of trafficking massive quantities of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road marketplace that facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal drug sales.
