Trump’s Misleading Blame on Opioids
President Donald Trump misleadingly cited a 23 percent decline in federal drug prosecutions between 2011 and 2016 to claim that the Obama administration ignored the opioid crisis.
“So they looked at this scourge and they let it go by, and we’re not letting it go by,” Trump said.
But Trump has not reversed that trend. The number of federal drug prosecutions in the first five months of the Trump administration has continued to decline.
Also, the data cited by Trump don’t specify whether opioid prosecutions fell under the Obama administration. The 23 percent decline is for drug-related prosecutions — including a steep drop in marijuana-related prosecutions, in part because it was legalized in certain circumstances in two states. Although the data cited by Trump did not provide information on opioid prosecutions, federal data(as opposed to prosecutions) show the number of people sentenced on heroin charges increased by more than 50 percent between 2011 and 2016.
