Trump Again Overstates Number of Drug Overdose Deaths in U.S.

Reviving an unfounded claim he has made for several years, President Donald Trump on Sept. 5 overstated the number of Americans who died in 2024 of drug overdoses, saying that he believed 300,000 or “350,000 people died last year from drugs.” A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us the provisional number of drug overdose deaths in 2024 was 79,383, and an expert in addiction medicine told us Trump’s number was “a gross exaggeration.”

Trump made the overestimate at the White House while signing an executive order renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War. Asked by a reporter about the recent U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, Trump said those actions were in response to drug trafficking. Eight U.S. warships carrying attack aircraft, an attack submarine and Navy surveillance planes have been deployed to the southern Caribbean, the New York Times reported.