President Donald Trump said U.S. military strikes on five Venezuelan boats have saved more than 100,000 lives because the maneuvers thwarted drug smuggling.
Several aspects of Trump’s statement make it wrong.
There is no way of knowing how many lives are saved as a result of drug interception efforts, drug experts have told PolitiFact.
Additionally, if Trump’s statement were accurate, the strikes on five boats in less than two months would have saved nearly double the number of U.S. lives lost to drug overdoses in an entire year.
The administration has provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of the drugs could have been destroyed.
Even if the boats were carrying 25,000 lethal drug doses each, that doesn’t mean that destroying them saved 125,000 lives. There were 73,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That means the drugs on five boats would have been responsible for 125,000 deaths, nearly double the number of U.S. overdose deaths in one year.
The amount of drugs that are stopped from entering the U.S. doesn’t indicate how many lives were saved.
We rate Trump’s statement Pants on Fire!
Megalomania - he makes these absurd comments about every action he takes. The ceasefire with hamas was the biggest peace deal for 2000 years. let's see how long it lasts.
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