U.S. Overdose Deaths Fall to Lowest 12-Month Level Since Early 2017, CDC Data Show

The left's case starts with timing. CDC's own data show the 12-month total peaked in mid-2023, before the current administration took office. By the period ending January 2025, the predicted count had fallen to 79,626, about 29% below the peak. It has since fallen by another 13,148 to 66,478.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., argues the administration's immigration focus has pulled resources from fentanyl cases. She posted Oct. 16: "This is Homeland Security's own investigation: 9 out of 11 Homeland Security Investigations field offices reviewed say their ability to fight fentanyl has been reduced because of Trump's orders to focus on mass deportations." The Department of Homeland Security inspector general's August report found that in fiscal 2025, as the department shifted toward immigration enforcement, HSI's hours on fentanyl investigations fell by "approximately 31 percent," fentanyl investigations by 24% and HSI fentanyl seizures by 39%. It said agents in 9 of 11 field offices interviewed reported reduced capacity on fentanyl cases. ICE concurred with all four of the report's recommendations.

Researchers, who are not speaking for either party, have not settled on why deaths fell. In a January study in the journal Science, Kasey Vangelov and Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, Keith Humphreys of Stanford, Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon, Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago and Bryce Pardo found that the trend "began to sharply reverse in mid-2023." They suggested "there was a major disruption in the illicit fentanyl trade, possibly tied to Chinese government actions." A September paper in Science Advances led by Nabarun Dasgupta of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill disputed part of that. It concluded that "National fentanyl purity alone does not provide sufficient explanation for the recent decline," and pointed to other possible causes, "including drug supply changes, public health interventions, demographic shifts, behavior changes, post-pandemic recovery, cartel dynamics, and fewer initiates to illicit opioid use."

On naloxone and treatment, the record is mixed. In an August Brookings essay, University of Maryland researchers Greg Midgette and Peter Reuter wrote that neither over-the-counter naloxone nor the end of the buprenorphine "X-waiver" "produced changes of the magnitude needed to explain an approximately 50% reduction in fentanyl-involved deaths." They also wrote that "Both policies deserve continued support—they almost certainly saved individual lives." Their conclusion: "the true explanation is almost certainly some combination of supply-side changes, demand-side adaptation, and the hard-to-quantify effects of community organizations doing the daily work of harm reduction."