During the last year of Donald Trump's first term as president, drug-related deaths in the United States rose by 30 percent—the largest annual increase ever recorded. During Joe Biden's final year as president, according to preliminary estimates reported last week, that death toll fell by 27 percent—another record.
On the face of it, Biden did a far better job of waging the war on drugs than Trump. But that conclusion credits presidents with much more power than they actually have to curtail substance abuse by attacking the supply of illegal drugs—an impossible mission doomed by the economics of prohibition.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently claimed the Trump administration had "saved…258 million lives" by intercepting shipments of illicit fentanyl. While Bondi's risible math broke new ground, it reflected her boss's simpleminded faith in the war on drugs.
