Are The Trump Admin’s Efforts To Combat US Addiction Crisis Actually Working?

Experts are split on whether the Trump administration’s efforts to confront the U.S.’ ongoing opioid crisis have made significant progress.

President Donald Trump has previously vowed to “address the addiction crisis” in the U.S. However, analysts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that while the president’s administration has made major moves to crack down on illicit drug use and overdose deaths across the nation, the government should consider taking further steps, such as bolstering access to evidence-based treatment and prioritizing harm reduction techniques. 

“The Trump administration deserves credit for recognizing that illicit fentanyl is simultaneously a medical crisis, a transnational organized crime enterprise and a national security threat,” Oxford Treatment Center Medical Director Lucas Trautman told the DCNF.

He added that the administration’s “most consequential actions” on the matter include designating fentanyl-trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations as well as “permanently placing fentanyl-related substances in Schedule I through the HALT Fentanyl Act, targeting precursor chemical brokers and transnational financial facilitators and using new Treasury authorities against financial institutions responsible for laundering opioid profits.”

Trump signed the HALT Fentanyl Act into law in July 2025, which permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

Trautman pointed out that overdose deaths involving opioids “fell from an estimated 55,296 in 2024 to 44,564 in 2025, while fentanyl-associated mortality also declined substantially.”

“However, we must acknowledge that overdose mortality began declining after its 2022 peak and fell sharply in 2024, before President Trump returned to office,” he aded. “The administration can reasonably claim that its actions may be helping sustain and deepen the decline, but it cannot scientifically claim sole authorship of it.”

The White House did not return the DCNF’s request for comment.

However, other analysts have contested the notion that the incumbent administration has made significant progress on the issue.

“There is no evidence that the Trump administration has made any progress in tackling the overdose crisis … the recent decline in overdose deaths likely reflects several interacting factors — including the unwinding of pandemic-era disruptions that caused overdose deaths to spike, changes in the illicit drug supply and patterns of drug use, greater naloxone availability, and harm-reduction efforts,” The Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jeffrey Singer told the DCNF.

“Add to this the fact that young people are drinking, vaping, and using drugs at record low levels. The evidence does not support claims that intensified drug-war enforcement deserves substantial credit for the decline, and it remains uncertain whether the decline will continue,” he continued.

Recent reports suggest that many Generation Z Americans are abstaining from using drugs and also often drinking less alcohol than other generations.

“Unfortunately, the administration is turning back the clock by reversing course on earlier efforts to encourage clinicians and private organizations to adopt proven harm reduction techniques, such as syringe services programs, overdose prevention centers, and expanded access to methadone—all of which have a decades-long track record of reducing overdoses and the spread of disease, and help explain why overdose deaths are so much lower in comparator countries that embrace harm reduction,” Singer added. “These strategies, which the current administration appears to be abandoning, might have largely contributed to the post-pandemic decline in overdose deaths.”

The Trump administration recently slashed federal funds for certain harm reduction initiatives aiming to make illicit drug use safer, such as needle-exchange programs and drug-testing strips, Politico reported on July 18. Some Republican-controlled states are now bolstering their own funding for such programs in response to the funding cuts, according to the outlet.

Harm reduction efforts prioritize “the prevention of harm, rather than on the prevention of substance use itself,” according to the Recovery Research Institute. Though, many Republicans have previously claimed that such initiatives can actually encourage addiction and substance use, Axios reported.

Overdose deaths involving opioids in the U.S. rose from 49,860 in 2019 to 81,806 in 2022, before dropping to 79,358 in 2023, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Total opioid-involved overdose deaths declined from 55,296 in 2024 to 44,564 in 2025, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

In January, Trump issued an executive order aiming to “drive a new national response to the disease of addiction that will create stronger coordination across government, the healthcare sector, faith communities, and the private sector in order to save lives, restore families, strengthen our communities, and build the Great American Recovery.”

The administration touted major progress on blocking illicit fentanyl and other drugs from crossing into the U.S. via the southern border in January, Spectrum News 1 reported. Additionally, the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) published a statement of “Drug Policy Priorities” in April 2025, which “lays out the urgent, first-year steps that must be taken to address the scourge of illicit drug use that continues plaguing our nation and taking American lives.”

“The implementation of these priorities will complement President Trump’s tireless efforts to stop Foreign Terrorist Organizations, cartels, and drug traffickers from harming Americans, and will help build a safer, healthier future for America,” per the ONDCP’s press release.

Trump similarly took steps to reduce overdose deaths during his first term, including unveiling $1.8 billion in new grants aiming to help U.S. states combat the opioid crisis and “help prevent more American lives from being lost to overdose,” according to a September 2019 White House fact sheet.

Trautman also told the DCNF that the government “should measure success by more than [illicit drug] seizures or arrests.”

“The U.S. is finally moving in the right direction, and the mortality decline is real, as I am witnessing as an addictionologist in Mississippi and Tennessee,” he explained. “But declaring victory prematurely would be dangerous. We will save the most lives when national security pressure on the supply chain is paired with immediate, low-barrier access to evidence-based treatment, buprenorphine and methadone, at every point where patients are most vulnerable.”