Pam Bondi Says Trump's Fentanyl Seizures Have Saved Over 250 Million Lives

Bondi said the president's drug policy prevented the deaths of 75 percent of Americans, in just his first 100 days.

This week marked the end of the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term. The administration celebrated the milestone by touting his accomplishments. The Department of Justice (DOJ), however, used some funky numbers to justify cracking down on opioids.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi toured a forensic lab at the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) headquarters on April 29. In a post on X to commemorate the visit, Bondi wrote, "In President Trump's first 100 days we've seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 Million lives."

Today is Fentanyl Awareness day. In President Trump's first 100 days we've seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 Million lives.

We are fighting relentlessly for the families of loved ones lost, for those whose lives are at risk, and for the soul of our… pic.twitter.com/nQLnN0nipn

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) April 29, 2025

Quite an achievement—especially since Bondi is suggesting that without federal intervention, more than one-third of the entire U.S. population would have died of fentanyl poisoning since the third week of January.

Not content with those improbable numbers, Bondi literally doubled down. During a televised Cabinet meeting the following day, she effusively praised Trump for the accomplishments of his first 100 days. "Since you have been in office," she gushed, "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." That figure amounts to roughly three out of every four Americans, or nearly the entire adult population according to the most recent U.S. Census.

Those are incredible numbers—as in, literally not credible. Bondi is playing fast and loose with statistics to make the administration's record sound better. Then again, government agencies routinely frame their achievements in the best possible light, no matter if it makes any logical sense.

According to the DEA, 2 milligrams of fentanyl "equates to a potentially deadly dose." Last year, the agency says it "seized more than 60 million fentanyl-laced fake pills and nearly 8,000 pounds of fentanyl powder," amounts "equivalent to more than 380 million lethal doses of fentanyl."

How do they arrive at these numbers? A DOJ spokesman told Slate's Jim Newell that they multiplied 3,400 kilograms seized by its "current purity level," then divided that amount into 2-milligram doses—yielding just over 258 million individual deadly drams.

The DOJ's answers spark more questions, Newell notes: "Is the 'purity level' consistent across these many kilos? Is this dose level 'fatal' to all people equally? Most important: How would 258 million fatal doses be distributed, one per person, to 258 million people, within 100 days, as would have presumably happened if Trump were not president?"

The latter question, when spelled out, is ridiculous—but Bondi's claim that seizing fentanyl pills saved the lives of every single American adult is equally ludicrous.

Prohibitionists speak about synthetic opioids like they're nuclear weapons that can be detonated in a population center and obliterate anyone in their path. In 2019, during Trump's first term, the Department of Homeland Security apparently deemed fentanyl a "mass casualty weapon" and considered classifying it as a weapon of mass destruction.

But that's not how drugs work. "Fentanyl pills don't fly around the country seeking people's mouths to enter," says Jeffrey Singer, a Cato Institute senior fellow and practicing physician. "People CHOOSE to buy government-prohibited substances on the black market, where they can never be certain of their purity or even if they are what the seller says they are."

Just because a particular amount of fentanyl—if divvied up and distributed across the entire population—could theoretically kill every living American adult, there's no reason to think the vast majority of Americans would ever come into contact with the substance.

In fact, a single bullet could kill someone; by the government's logic, a box of 100 bullets technically contains enough firepower to kill 100 people. In the same Cabinet meeting where she credited the president for saving three out of every four Americans from dying of fentanyl poisoning, Bondi said "DOJ agencies" had also "seized 14,500 guns off the streets" and "651,000 rounds of ammo." Why not claim this seizure had "saved 651,000 lives?" Presumably, because anyone listening would recognize that as a ludicrous claim.

"Bondi's statement serves a rhetorical or political purpose, but [it] is irresponsible and not credible," Singer cautions. "Bondi overstates the risk in a way that can induce fear rather than understanding, and it can undermine trust in public messaging if people learn how exaggerated the assumptions are."

Comments

[Dillinger]

ooh now do how the mrna vaccines saved hundreds of millions of lives too.

[mad.casual]

I've contested the claims of actual lives lost vs. arbitrarily large numbers of (false) projecticon's lives saved with regard to climate change for decades; and Pam Bondi isn't even a scientist.

I can't remember the specific source and I'm probably paraphrasing a bit but the quote or notion "It is of absolute existential importance that we save all of mankind, just not in *that* way." comes to mind.

[Eeyore]

The answer is - 8.2 billion lives saved.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

"""Bondi's statement serves a rhetorical or political purpose, but [it] is irresponsible and not credible," Singer cautions. ""

Yes, rhetoric like that serves a political purpose. It always has. Didn't start nor will it end with Bondi. It's usually used by liberals and progressives. Sad to see the Trump admin playing the liberal game.

[Sarah Palin's Buttplug - Jan 6 = 9/11 (same motive)]

Bondi is either stupid or lying.

Or like Donnie - both.

Remember, Ukraine attacked Russia according to Donnie.

[InsaneTrollLogic (Did the penguin tell you to do this?)]

Shall we comment on your neocon buddies who instigated Euromaiden?

[BigT]

I'm sure she meant the fentanyl was enough to kill 250 million people. So, in theory, yes those lives were saved, but it's not the right way to present it.

[MWAocdoc]

If only the President were as laser-focused on draining the swamp as he is on destroying the greatest wealth machine in human history ... well, never mind ...

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Bondi, Pam Blondi, legally blonde.

One can only hope the context makes it sound less stupid, and knowing Reason and its cherry picked quotes and inane articles, that's a distinct possibility and makes more sense. I don't think anyone that stupid could actually graduate law school.

[mad.casual]

My favorite part is [quote]current purity level[comma][quote].

Setting aside the similar professional stupidity of quoting a comma, It's pretty clear that "current purity level" means they aren't counting (the lethality of) whatever contaminants or material it's been cut with or what they expect it to be cut with were they to find it on the street. But Joe "Lizard Brain" Lancaster proceeds to parse the mathematics as if it's somehow OK or pointed or (in)correct if the amount seized was only projected to kill 249M or even 129M Americans.

[Bipedal Humanoid]

Not sure why this was even covered. Opioids probably only kill mostly lower class white people, so not sure why Reason or Democrats even care about this.

[James K. Polk]

Pam Blondie has her moments.

[ElrondPA]

I'm trying to figure out how one pill can kill 5 people. Do you take a lick and pass it around (before you keel over)?

[BigT]

There is enough fentanyl for 5 fatal doses in one pill. Dealers often grind up the pills and dilute them with starch or something and make it into multiple doses.

[Roberta]

You die and they eat you.

[Roberta]

So, like, her very words, in that order, without qualifiers like "...the equivalent of...", with a straight face? This proves that becoming a lawyer destroys your mind for anything else.

[Brandybuck]

I wanna hear how the MAGA crowd defends this. Oh wait, they're not, they're deflecting. Typical.

[car-keynes]

As the irrefutable fact of the unpopular drug goes, it kills people who come into chance contact with it. Notorious drugs, on the other hand, might be something like crack cocaine that had a reputation for killing without coherent explanation persons who were in the peak of health, such as sports stars.

But what sort of contact?
Whatever sort of fentanyl claim you have, including its potent demon bretheren carfentanyl, ohmecarfentanil, or "fentanyl analogues," for short, the verb that goes with them relevantly relates chiefly to how their potency affects bystanders who come into contact with their traces.

To this end, the righteous libertarian must ask, is there anything there -- or is the victimization simply more a function of a person's ignorance given that, "forewarned is forearmed"? In other words, when one smells the fentanyl bounding around through one's neighborhood, is there anything there; what were that power that in the immortal word of Shakespeare "move me" to think something first pleasant but later conclude that too many other chemicals abound in general to favor any of them, lest what detract be given unwitting impetus to oxidize together to one's overall detriment?

For there have been bad times when people were dying of demons alone. Translating that, a demon of alcoholic fascination has held fast like barnacles and managed to incur actual leverage against the person of an alcoholic, whose self-victimization over the days, months or years develops into morbid manias and eventual death due to disease such as "cirrhoses of liver" or addiction to detrimental substance.

Talking this way does not necessarily make us smarter but at best only principled if but capable of following otherwise mysterious narratives that relate to cause of death, readily understood as thanatomorphologies. Science explains, that by understanding the causes of things, only then can we begin to determine whether known causes were definitive -- such as acting alone else sufficient to explain morphology of harm -- or whether known causes were facilitated by something being overlooked such as ignorance of alcohol intoxication depleting certain vitamins or careless oxidation, per chance.

However often science may wheel over the same, interesting inquiries and speculations that have valid bases (i.e., cause of death), you are at your best when your knowledge allows you to interpret a claim and evaluate it correctly and categorize it according to its value: true, false, supportive of or unsupportive of, conditionally true or false, or otherwise conclusive. You are at your best when you know what were broken and can say how best to fix it. But even there, there may be room for improvement

Fentanyl must be all of a number of certain things but isn't all of a number of other things. Can its mere presence overload the base dichotomy that holds its inevitable identity in limited esteem at point of incident? Thinkers know that they have come into contact with all of these substances before in population centers where weather has the fiercest expressions in its various overtures throughout the year. Thinkers know when they identify new and unprecedented traces of a substance. They cannot know why, however, unless there exists enough evidence to identify its origin.

In a libertarian world, survival can be considered newsworthy. While conventional wisdom has arrived at common sense regard for public safety and advised against getting bit by poisonous serpents or avoiding consumption of intoxicants at alarming frequencies, not driving past the speed limit in town or on the interstate or any number of ideas about what reliably kills people purely statistically, what might get most anyone killed at the age of 12 meanwhile looks more and more ridiculous to anyone who has actual adult experience for at least a decade or two. Inevitably we may begin to think that our freedom matters most and that laws should favor statistics simply to be heard as compelling social phenomena whilst people deserve to make their own case to defend their own actions particularly if they have no reason to find that the statistical standard applies in their case of victimless routine.

I wonder, merely, should I be alarmed (?) when the only question of pertinence relate to what circumstances I should be alarmed. Those circumstances describe harm to be an opportunity zone of actual incident predicated on repeat chemical realities as opposed to predictable or calculable levels of a substance. Qualified medical professionals can readily explain that your LD (lethal dosage) of a given substance -- when present in a critical quantity of unaltered purity however accompanied -- can be calculated to such level of precision as to guarantee its deadliness in terms of doubtless burial if exposed without remediation of antidote. However, in regards to other chemicals that may be present at the same period of exposure that may be capable of increasing the effect of such substance, we do not tend to hear from doctors. Places with detrimental air quality have demonstrated daily spews of burning trash, incinerations of hospital wastes, coal burning, wood burning, oil burning, petrol burning, airborne chemical from cleaning purposes to practical uses such as potencies of any order from glue to corrosive acids to inflammible solvents. Additions of choice substances of specific potencies can top out cocktails that may range from familiar to already distressing. The circumstance of exposure to fentanyl makes the question as practical as it rightly may be known to get.

People -- regardless of being statistics when a given purpose were obvious -- are not statistics when they may be subjected to the very worst intersection of complications due to ongoing cocktails of inner city chemicals. Encountering analogues of fentanyl on less-than-ideal terms rather explains that potency is not an adversity of one lone Switch in the ideal of a nameable community circumstance but rather an adversity of complicating and conflicting potencies meeting the seductive role of yet another potency with recurrent potential, the very one in question.

Even if fentanyl analogues could turn off various conflicting potencies, their recurrence begs the same question that one must comply with proper categorization of its actual role -- and particularly if its recurrence cannot be ignored.

I remain at that thinking crux of wondering if I should care, because the question can only remain unanswered until the proper proof emerges. And I predict that without any social dialogue or address, that the possibility would remain near zero unless or until such time when people may have basis to challenge the haunted thinking about substances derived originally from medicines extracted without contest from life forms by coming up probably with a unified chemical model to simplify harm that can readily be amended versus harm that cannot be considered negligible When evaluating a specific substance that May be used dependably as medicine -- such as fentanyl analogues.