When President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Pam Bondi as attorney general, he extolled her "incredible job" in "work[ing] to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs and reduc[ing] the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths." Yet those deaths exploded on Bondi's watch as Florida's attorney general.
According to data from the Florida Department of Health, the age-adjusted rate of "deaths from drug poisoning" did fall a bit after Bondi took office, from 13.7 per 100,000 residents in 2011 to 12.1 in 2013. But then it resumed its upward trajectory, reaching 25.1—nearly double the 2011 rate—by the time Bondi left office in 2019. The death rate rose sharply in 2020 (as it did across the country), rose again in 2021, and declined in 2022 and 2023, when it was 30.8 per 100,000.
In 2019, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Florida ranked 20th on the list of states with the highest drug death rates, down from 15th in 2011. But despite that relative improvement, Florida's rate as reported by the CDC rose by 66 percent during that period. In absolute terms, the annual number of drug deaths rose by more than 80 percent.
