Pam Bondi Deleted Misleading Fentanyl Death Chart

US Attorney General Pam Bondi deleted a social media post after it became clear that the chart she shared to praise the Trump administration’s handling of the opioid crisis actually showed a decline in overdose deaths that occurred before Trump took office.

This has ignited fresh scrutiny of how political leaders use — and sometimes misuse — public health data to advance partisan narratives. Bondi’s post, its deletion, and the ensuing controversy illuminate broader debates over the trajectory of the fentanyl crisis, the role of evidence in public policy, and the integrity of official communications.

Misleading Attribution of Overdose Trends

Bondi published a social media post featuring a graph titled ‘Annual Drug Overdose Death (DOD) Rates by US Census Region From October 2015 to October 2024’.

The chart, sourced from a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study analysing official US mortality data, showed that drug overdose death rates, fuelled in large part by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, rose sharply over much of the past decade before beginning a sustained decline in 2023–24.

In the caption accompanying the chart, Bondi wrote that the data demonstrated the Trump administration’s success in combating the drug epidemic, citing border closures and ‘hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses’ seized by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

What she did not acknowledge in the post, nor in the deleted copy, was that the period covered by the graph concluded in October 2024, well before Trump regained the presidency in January 2025 and before Bondi was confirmed as attorney general on 5 February 2025.

That timing immediately undercut Bondi’s interpretation. The most pronounced decrease in overdose deaths shown in the chart began after mid-2023 and continued through 2024, a period when President Joe Biden held office. Federal provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that US overdose deaths dropped by roughly 27% in 2024 compared with 2023, reaching the lowest level recorded since 2019.

Expert Interpretation and Data Context

The JAMA study upon which the chart was based examined overdose death rates from January 2015 through October 2024 using National Center for Health Statistics and US Census Bureau data.

It found that nationwide drug overdose death rates, which had doubled between 2015 and 2023, began to decline significantly in early 2024, with an accelerated deceleration after February of that year.

That trend is consistent with multiple federal mortality estimates showing that synthetic opioids, including illicitly manufactured fentanyl, continue to drive a large share of overdose deaths even as the overall number declines.

The CDC‘s provisional data indicate about 87,000 overdose deaths occurred in the 12 months ending September 2024, down sharply from the previous year.

Public health experts caution against oversimplifying these patterns. US drug overdose mortality reflects a complex interplay of supply factors, changing drug markets, public health interventions such as naloxone distribution and treatment access, and socioeconomic conditions. No single policy or enforcement action can entirely explain near-term fluctuations in death rates.

Broader Context of the Fentanyl Crisis

The incident comes against the backdrop of a long-running and evolving overdose crisis in the United States. Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, have been the leading cause of drug overdose deaths for much of the past decade, accounting for tens of thousands of deaths annually at the peak of the epidemic.

Efforts to reduce these fatalities have included expanded distribution of naloxone, increased access to medication-assisted treatment, and broader harm-reduction initiatives.

Federal law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, report significant seizures of fentanyl and precursor chemicals, although experts caution that seizure statistics alone do not necessarily correlate directly with overdose mortality trends.

Analyses by independent fact-checking organisations have previously debunked exaggerated claims about the impact of drug seizures on lives saved, noting that annual overdose deaths occur in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of millions implied by some political rhetoric.

Originally published on IBTimes UK