Bondi Far Overstates the Impact of Fentanyl Seizures on American Lives – FactCheck.org

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In the April 30 meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, which followed his 100th day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the president’s progress so far and highlighted efforts to curb the flow of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. But Bondi overstated the impact of drug seizures, claiming that they had saved the lives of more than half of all Americans.

“Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl … which saved — are you ready for this media — 258 million lives,” Bondi said.

The total U.S. population is about 342 million, according to the Census Bureau. So, in Bondi’s rhetoric, that would mean three-quarters of the country would have died if not for recent drug busts.

The previous day, on April 29, Bondi had posted a lower estimate on X, saying, “In President Trump’s first 100 days we’ve seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 Million lives.”

Still, that would be about one-third of the country.

Drug overdose deaths have been trending downward since 2023, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a Feb. 25 press release, the CDC reported a 24% decline for fiscal year 2024, compared with the prior year. It estimated that there were 87,000 drug overdose deaths in fiscal 2024. Most of those deaths — about 55,000 — were from synthetic opioids, including fentanyl.

Even if DOJ’s drug seizures were to eliminate every single fentanyl death in the U.S., 55,000 is a far cry from 258 million. Or even 119 million.

We asked the Department of Justice how Bondi had arrived at that estimate, and we received an email that said:

DOJ email, May 5: 1 kg of fentanyl* .1518 (current purity level) * 1000 (to convert to grams) / by .002 (amount needed for a deadly dose) = lethal dose of fentanyl

So, 3,400 Kg of fentanyl seized in Trump’s first 100 days 

3400*.1518

*1000

/.002

=258,060,000 deadly doses

The DOJ had calculated the number of potentially deadly doses of fentanyl that could have been made from the 3,400 kilograms that were seized. Prosecutors often highlight the amount of lives that a seized quantity of fentanyl has the capacity to kill, but Bondi heightened that rhetoric by translating it to lives “saved.”

“It’s government lingo at its best,” Anthony Cangelosi, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who has investigated the import of narcotics for the Department of Homeland Security, told us in a phone interview.

Regardless of who it is — a U.S. attorney or a local prosecutor — law enforcement officials always use the high-end estimate for the potential harm that could have been caused by drugs or contraband that was seized, Cangelosi said.

“I’m not saying that the numbers are incorrect,” he said. “Does it have the potential to kill this many people? Sure.” But, he asked, does it actually kill this many people? “No.”

Overdoses generally happen when too much of a drug like fentanyl has been mixed into a pill or when the user takes too many pills, Cangelosi explained. So, not all doses of fentanyl end up killing the user.

Also, most Americans wouldn’t be exposed to fentanyl at all, since they don’t use opioids or pills that would be laced with the drug. For instance, about 25% of the population reported using illicit drugs — the vast majority of which was marijuana — and about 0.2% of the population reported using illegally made fentanyl, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which covered 2023.

Rhetoric like Bondi’s, Cangelosi said, is “always a form of hyperbole, to some extent. But, again, it [the fentanyl seized] has the capability to do that.”

Overdose deaths from fentanyl began significantly increasing in the second decade of the 2000s, and during his first administration, Trump declared an opioid crisis. The Department of Justice at the time began announcing fentanyl busts by highlighting the stories of individual victims and reporting numbers of overdose deaths.

By April 2018, it had begun calculating the number of deadly doses that could have been made from a given stash. “Over the last few weeks, the DEA has seized a total of more than 64 kilograms of suspected fentanyl in cases from Detroit to New York City,” then Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on April 17, 2018. “That’s enough to kill 21 million people—more than the population of New York State.”

The Justice Department continued to tout its fentanyl busts under the Biden administration and, in some cases, provided the calculation of lethal doses. For example, then Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a speech at the end of 2021, “In August, the department launched a nationwide law enforcement effort to address the alarming increase in the availability and lethality of fentanyl-laced pills. By the end of September, our cooperative efforts led to the seizure of 1.8 million such pills – a supply large enough to kill more than 700,000 Americans.”

And, in a January 2023 speech, Garland praised the efforts of various agencies that had seized caches of fentanyl. “Together, these seizures represent more than 379 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl,” he said. “That much fentanyl could kill every single American.”

But Bondi turned that statistic into a claim about the number of lives saved.

Fentanyl Seizures

The number of fentanyl pills that the Drug Enforcement Administration has seized between January and April — 22 million — is up by 24% compared with the same time period in 2024, or 36% compared with 2023, according to data captured in archived versions of the DEA’s website.

As we’ve reported before, there is no comprehensive federal data showing how much fentanyl is in the country.

But there is data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection about the amount of drugs seized at U.S. borders, and experts say most of the U.S. supply of fentanyl comes through the southern border.

CBP data show that, beginning in January, monthly fentanyl seizures have been at their lowest numbers since 2022. We asked the DEA if its figures included seizures at the border, but we didn’t receive a response.

We don’t know how much fentanyl is smuggled into the country, but the amount seized at the primary entry point has been lower in recent months. And we don’t know how many people would have died from the fentanyl that has been seized so far this year. But overdose statistics show yearly deaths are in the tens of thousands, not millions.

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