Study: Fentanyl smuggling plummeted under Biden, but success remains largely unheralded

WASHINGTON – Fentanyl smuggling and overdose deaths in the United States have plummeted under the Biden administration, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

The report found that fentanyl-related deaths dropped by more than one-third during the final year of President Joe Biden's term compared to their peak in 2023.

Stanford University researchers, led by Keith Humphreys, analyzed drug seizure data and determined that both the purity and potency of fentanyl on the street market fell sharply after 2023.

The research team also monitored social media, recording a 14-fold increase in comments regarding drug shortages and inferior product quality.

Experts attribute these shifts to the administration’s expansion of healthcare and addiction treatment programs. They also credited diplomatic efforts that successfully pressured China to restrict the sale of precursor chemicals used to manufacture the synthetic opioid.

The Biden administration’s handling of the fentanyl crisis serves as a definitive case study in the disconnect between policy execution and political optics. While internal data confirms that the administration achieved unprecedented success in dismantling fentanyl smuggling networks—a feat once considered nearly impossible by security experts—it signally failed to translate these operational wins into a coherent political narrative.

This strategic silence created a communication vacuum that Donald Trump and his allies were quick to fill. By successfully reframing the fentanyl epidemic from a public health crisis into a broader indictment of border security and immigration policy, the GOP effectively neutralized the previous administration’s technical achievements. In the arena of national politics, the narrative of a porous border proved far more potent than the complex reality of supply-chain interdiction.

The policy consequences of this messaging failure are now coming into sharp focus in late 2026. The Trump administration has moved aggressively to dismantle the Biden-era framework, pivoting away from diplomatic engagement with China and domestic treatment initiatives. In their place, Washington has embraced a more hawkish posture, characterized by punitive trade tariffs and the increasing militarization of drug enforcement efforts.

As the U.S. shifts toward these hardline measures, the central question remains whether this new strategy can sustain—or will ultimately reverse—the progress made over the previous four years. It is a stark reminder that in the high-stakes world of federal policy, public perception often carries more weight than empirical results.

While the fentanyl crisis reaches every corner of the United States, including the Vietnamese-American community, current high-level research and policy initiatives often overlook our specific challenges. There is little data on how this epidemic uniquely impacts our small business landscape—from the nail salon industry to phở restaurants in Little Saigons across the country—or its effect on the flow of remittances. Furthermore, existing policies fail to address the crisis through the lens of our distinct immigration hurdles, leaving a gap in understanding how it intersects with visa categories like F2B, H-1B, TPS, and EB-5.