War on Drugs

Jacob Sullum | 10.30.2025 4:50 PM

As of Wednesday, President Donald Trump had ordered 14 military attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coast of Colombia, killing a total of 61 people. But according to Trump, each of those strikes prevented 25,000 drug overdose deaths, meaning he has saved 350,000 lives so far by summarily executing smugglers.

"Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives," Trump averred during an Oval Office press conference a couple of weeks ago. "Every boat is saving 25,000 lives. The boats get hit, and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean."

That eyebrow-raising estimate resembles Attorney General Pam Bondi's absurd claim that the Trump administration had "saved…258 million lives" during its first 100 days by intercepting shipments of illicit fentanyl—an assertion that

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