Public Health vs. Drug War

In 2025, President Donald Trump rapidly redirected U.S. fentanyl and overdose policy away from Biden-era public health and harm-reduction efforts toward a militarized drug-war approach, combining new laws, executive orders, budget cuts and deployments. He signed the Halt Fentanyl Act, ordered U.S. naval strikes on suspected drug boats, designated cartels as terrorist organizations, classified fentanyl as a 'weapon of mass destruction,' deployed National Guard units, and backed roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that imperil addiction treatment, even as CDC provisional data show fatal overdoses fell nearly 27% in Biden’s final year under expanded treatment and harm reduction.