A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A new study in the journal Science is raising questions about the way President Trump has framed the debate over fentanyl. Trump dismantled many of President Joe Biden's drug addiction policies. He says they were a failure. But researchers found fentanyl smuggling into the U.S. plunged under the Biden administration and overdose deaths also fell. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann is here. Brian, what does this new research say?
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Well, A, this report really adds in fascinating ways to research showing the Biden administration made unprecedented progress, disrupting the illegal smuggling routes that were flooding U.S. communities with fentanyl. I spoke about this with Keith Humphreys. He's at Stanford University, one of the co-lead authors. And he says they studied fentanyl seizures. They found purity and potency dropped dramatically after 2023. And Humphreys' team of researchers also surveyed social media. They were looking for references to the fact that street supplies of the drug were drying up.
KEITH HUMPHREYS: We start looking for shortage - the word shortage - or weaker. My fentanyl's not strong enough. I'm not getting high anymore - all these kinds of phrases. And there's an explosion, a 14-fold increase in the mention of these terms right when overdoses start dropping.
MANN: And this paper in Science, A, found fentanyl deaths in Biden's final year in office dropped by more than a third from the peak in 2023. That kind of progress is just unheard of. And this paper builds on a lot of other research, as well as an analysis by the Drug Enforcement Administration that all show similar progress.
MARTÍNEZ: How did the Biden administration do this?
MANN: Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. When I first started reporting on fentanyl, A, most experts said stopping this drug or even slow [inaudible] significantly would be nearly impossible. That's because fentanyl is just easy to make from industrial chemicals. So drug policy experts I've been speaking to think Biden expanded health care and drug addiction treatment programs in ways that saved lives. And this new paper suggests Biden's team also convinced China to help curb the sale of so-called precursor chemicals that are needed to make fentanyl in ways that really hit the drug gangs hard. Again, here's Keith Humphreys.
HUMPHREYS: Biden's people - the foreign policy people - can feel very proud that they made a positive impact.
MANN: Now, here's something interesting. Humphreys and addiction researchers I've been speaking to think Biden made real progress on fentanyl but then failed to tell the American public about those policy gains.
HUMPHREYS: I think it hurt them because they had a story of success to tell.
MANN: And you may remember, A, that during the presidential campaign, Trump really clobbered Biden on the fentanyl issue. Trump claimed falsely that no progress was being made reducing overdose deaths.
MARTÍNEZ: So if Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had this information, why didn't they use it? Why didn't they talk about this?
MANN: You know, it's a real mystery, especially because some of the biggest improvements on fentanyl were happening in political battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. I reached out to Kamala Harris and members of the Biden and Harris campaigns to ask about their messaging on fentanyl, and I got no response.
Talking with addiction and drug policy experts, I did hear one interesting theory. Despite these plummeting fentanyl deaths and Biden's success, they think Trump succeeded in reframing this as a border issue, part of the wider migrant crisis. And that's brought sweeping consequences. Trump has now dismantled many of Biden's fentanyl policies, and he's shifted to a new range of policies from trade tariffs to an increasingly militarized drug war.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Brian Mann. Brian, thanks.
MANN: Thank you, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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