President Biden told a gathering of world leaders in New York Tuesday that “for years, too little has been done” to protect Americans from fentanyl overdoses — after more than 250,000 Americans died from consuming the potent and largely China-sourced synthetic opioid since he took office.
The retiring president cast himself as a leader on the issue, noting death rates were rising before he took office and pointing to modest recent declines of about 10% — without mentioning that deaths have nearly doubled on his watch compared to former President Donald Trump’s four-year term.
“For years, too little has been done to beat this threat here at home and around the world. In fact, before I came to office, overdose deaths in our country were increasing by more than 30% year-over-year,” Biden, 81, said at a symposium at the InterContinental Barclay hotel, which also featured the leaders of Italy, the Dominican Republic and Belgium.
“I’m proud to announce for the first time in five years, overdose deaths are actually coming down across America. The latest data shows a 10% drop,” Biden told dignitaries in town for the United Nations General Assembly, adding, “There are too many that are still dying. There’s so much more that needs to be done.”
In the first three years of Biden’s administration, more than 223,000 US residents died of fentanyl and related compounds, according to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates.
If the 10% decline cited by Biden holds during his final year in office, he will retire on Jan. 20 with about 290,000 Americans dead from fentanyl over four years, of whom roughly 267,000 would have already perished.
Under Trump, who is seeking to retake the White House, more than 159,000 Americans are believed to have died — meaning Biden is on track for an 82.4% increase in deaths over his four-year term as fentanyl is increasingly cut into non-opioid drugs such as cocaine.
Biden has for years badly bungled fentanyl death statistics in public remarks — both lowballing and grossly overstating them — and on Tuesday stumbled over the pronunciation of naloxone, the widely available antidote that reverses the effects of opioid overdoses.
The president has faced consistent Republican criticism for not doing more and directed world leaders Tuesday to the fact that he described overdose deaths as a priority in the “unity agenda” outlined in his March 2022 State of the Union speech to Congress — but backdated it to his January 2021 inauguration.
“When I became president, I made beating opioids a central part of the unity agenda, something that our entire nation could rally around, and has,” Biden said.
“Over the last four years, we’ve turned that agenda into action. My administration made nal — excuse me — na-, made naloxone, a life-saving overdose reversal medicine available over the counter,” Biden said.
“You could purchase it over the counter for the first time.”
In fact, naloxone was available in at least 35 states without a prescription before Biden took office.
“We invested over $80 billion across 50 states to expand access to addiction treatment and support. I issued an executive order that cut cartel leaders off from our financial system, including issuing 300 sanctions,” Biden went on.
“And I’ve deployed hundreds of advanced X ray machines to stop the threat of pills and powder coming across our border… As a result these efforts, or fentanyl has been seized at our border in the last two years than in the previous five years combined.”
The president added that fentanyl is “a national security threat.”
After Biden wrapped up, an unnamed senior administration official told the White House press pool that other countries might have to take up the torch of fighting fentanyl should Vice President Kamala Harris lose the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“If, for some reason, a future administration decides that that’s not its priority, although it would be tragic if that were the case, given the consequences of fentanyl in the homeland, we anticipate that others will carry the flag, and that’s part of what collective action is about,” that official said.
Both US-Mexico border officials and Republican leaders say that record-breaking illegal immigration under Biden appears to have facilitated drug-running between legal points of entry, though fentanyl’s compact size also allows it to smuggled using the international mail and shipping systems and within vehicles at legal border checkpoints.
Despite the significant toll on American society, Biden has never publicly pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping on the matter — with Republicans critics openly questioning whether that had anything to do with two lucrative ventures with Chinese state-linked businesses involving first brother James and first son Hunter Biden — in which the future president met with key figures in the enterprises.
Trump claimed last year that Biden “was bribed and now he’s being blackmailed” by Beijing and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told The Post that Biden was “soft” on China and that “it probably has something to do with business relationships and may very well involve Hunter and James Biden and some of the deals they made over there.”
Although they didn’t discuss the matter in front of cameras, Biden left a summit last November with Xi in San Francisco with what he said was the Chinese leader’s agreement to launch a crackdown.
Trump has said in campaign-trail remarks that Xi would have more harshly policed exports had he remained the US president — repeating his frequent boast that he convinced Xi to adopt the death penalty for smuggling the compound.
