How Trump’s False Claim That 300 Million People Died From Drugs Impacts Pain Patients
/By Crystal Lindell
President Donald Trump recently claimed that "300 million people died” from drug-related causes last year.
If that were true, it would mean that nearly the entire population of the United States – 342 million people – died from a drug overdose in 2024.
Trump’s claim is so absurd, that it’s difficult to know what he was trying to say or what he may have meant.
The comment came during a Q&A with reporters, when he was asked about the U.S. strike on a supposed drug-smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela, an attack the president of Venezuela called "illegal." .
"What's illegal are the drugs that were on the boat and the drugs that are being sent into our country. And the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs. That's what's illegal," Trump said.
In a community note on X/Twitter, the site’s fact checkers noted that 62 million people worldwide died from all causes in 2024, which “makes it impossible for 300 million people to have died of one single cause.”
Obviously, the real numbers for drug-related deaths are significantly lower than 300 million. In reality, there were about 80,000 U.S. overdose deaths in 2024. Globally, 600,000 deaths were attributed to drug use in 2019, the most recent data available.
The World Health Organization reported there are 3 million deaths annually due to alcohol and drug use. But a majority of those — 2.6 million — were attributed to alcohol consumption.
So, Trump may have seen the “3 million” and misremembered it as "300 million," while also ignoring the fact that most of those deaths were related to alcohol.
It’s also possible he meant 300-thousand deaths. The president has actually used that number in the past, while adding that he doesn’t believe the overdose numbers the government produces. .
“We don’t want drugs killing our people. I believe we lost 300,000. You know, they always say 95, 100,000. I believe they’ve been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year,” Trump said earlier this month.
Regardless of where the “300 million” statistic came from, it’s troubling that Trump said it at all, and that there was little correction from the media. There also doesn’t seem to have been any correction from the White House, as far as I can tell.
Slips like this aren’t just annoying, they have very real implications – especially for pain patients – who already know what happens when prescription opioid deaths are exaggerated. The supply of opioid pain medication gets cut.
When people hear it from the president or White House, it carries weight.
The Trump administration is not alone in this. In 2016, during the Obama administration, the CDC and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy released three different estimates in one week on the number of Americans that died from prescription opioids. The numbers ranged from a low of 12,700 to a high of 17,536 deaths in 2015.
Aside from the fact that it literally impacts government policies, the wildly inflated numbers also affect how people respond to them in their day-to-day lives..
While medical professionals and policy makers might recognize that “300 million” or “300 thousand” deaths is an exaggeration, they also may assume that it can’t be that too far off if the president is saying it.
Such a toll would be catastrophic and signal that the U.S. overdose crisis is getting worse, when the actual number of drug deaths is declining.
This false information perpetuates the idea that all opioids, both legal and illegal, are an extremely deadly problem and need to be restricted.
Then, when a doctor who saw the clip of Trump on the news goes to treat a patient, he may think twice before writing a hydrocodone prescription because he vaguely remembers something about millions of people overdosing.
Loved ones of patients in pain can also be negatively swayed by such fake statistics. For example, say a mother is prescribed 5 mg doses of Norco for cancer pain. Their adult child may assume that even such a low dose has the potential to be deadly, because of what the president said, and they may discourage their mom from taking it.
Ideally, the White House Communications Office would issue some sort of correction of Trump’s statement. But seeing how this happened a few days ago, and they have yet to address it, I assume such a correction is unlikely to ever happen. And they’re hoping we’ll all forget about it.
Any single drug-related death is too many, and we absolutely should be looking into policies that address overdoses in ways that are proven to help. But when advocates have to instead spend time combating misinformation, it just takes time and resources away from the real problem.
Opioids do cause deaths, but they also give millions of people their lives back by alleviating their pain and allowing them to actually function.
When we only focus on one side of the equation — especially when that focus is marred by widely inaccurate information — the result is just more pain and suffering.
