The Trump administration is making it harder to fight the overdose crisis

President Donald J. Trump’s administration is making it much harder to fight the overdose crisis thanks to a newly signed bill called the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl (HALT Fentanyl) Act.

This legislation will place any type of fentanyl on the most restrictive schedule of the Controlled Substances Act. At the same time, the administration is making prevention and treatment harder with funding delays for overdose prevention and deep cuts to Medicaid—the single largest payer of opioid use disorder treatment.

The United States has already tried this strategy, which is to attack the supply while ignoring the demand for drugs.

But focusing on supply alone will not stop the nation’s overdose crisis. In fact, U.S. overdose deaths have been climbing for decades despite a bipartisan penchant—from Presidents Richard M. Nixon and George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton and Joe Biden—for expanded law enforcement and prohibition. But just as it did with alcohol a century ago, prohibition drives the very type of supply that has led to the current overdose crisis. Because prohibition incentivizes more concentrated, easier-to-traffic products, it leads to a supply dominated by even more dangerous substances, such as the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Whether the Trump administration’s ultimate goal is to prevent overdoses or to stop Americans from using illegal drugs completely, it cannot rely exclusively on an enforcement-first strategy. A better approach is to maintain funding continuity for health programs that have proven their worth in recent years. For example, when community organizations are able to purchase the overdose-reversal medication naloxone and distribute it at no cost to their participants, overdoses fall. And rather than micromanaging the funds and programs, as the administration is currently proposing, it must provide the security and flexibility needed to adapt quickly to on-the-ground changes in drug supply, use behaviors, and more. After all, the people on the ground every day know what will work best for their communities—the federal government does not.

There are glimmers of progress thanks to a commitment to treating substance use as a health issue. At its peak in 2023, the U.S. overdose crisis took more than 114,000 lives. Almost 50 million adults have lost a close friend or family member to a drug overdose. But the tragedy has begun to subside since then, with past-year drug deaths down to approximately 82,000 in January 2025. Experts attribute much of this success to expanded access to evidence-backed prevention and treatment that cuts overdose risk and directly reduces demand for illicit drugs. Pragmatic interventions like widespread drug checking and community distribution of overdose reversal medications have also played an important role, keeping people alive and affirming their value as community members while connecting them to an array of health and social services.

The funding currently targeted supports those interventions. Given the progress made in reducing overdose deaths, now is not the time to cut these crucial programs. Not only do these services improve health and social outcomes among people who use drugs, they improve public safety, promote positive social engagement, and save taxpayers money as well. In fact, treatment for substance use disorders cuts spending by as much as $11 for every dollar invested. Put simply, cutting Medicaid and restricting grants for overdose prevention programs will likely disrupt recent progress in reversing the overdose crisis and could even cost the government money that it is trying to save.

More than 100 years of drug policy that prioritizes law enforcement and prohibition shows us that supply-side tactics cannot reverse an overdose crisis—let alone eliminate all illicit drug use—on their own. Rather, diverse and comprehensive health programs save lives and reduce demand for drugs while benefiting communities and saving taxpayers money. These programs are at their most successful and cost-effective when given the flexibility to respond to local needs in real time.

The Trump administration says it wants to improve American lives while ensuring government efficiency. Dismantling programs proven to produce such cost-effective and far-reaching benefits would be a mistake—and not one worth repeating.