Does a medical study chart show that drug overdose deaths in the United States sharply declined in 2025 under President Trump? No, that's not true: The chart is based on a medical study published in June 2025 that looked at drug death statistics in the decade ending in October 2024, which was three months before Trump returned to the presidency. Researchers measured the sharp decline in drug deaths starting in mid-2023, during the Biden presidency.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the @overton_news account on X on January 1, 2026. The caption introducing a clip of a Joe Rogan podcast read:
Joe Rogan just said the quiet part out loud about Trump's war on drugs and it completely shatters the media's narrative.
Overdose deaths are COLLAPSING nationwide and Rogan says it's not an accident.
"They're blowing up these f*cking boats that are bringing in all the drugs!"
ROGAN: "From the time Trump's been in office, deaths by overdose have dropped off a cliff."
[Pulls up a chart]
"Look at that! Look at 2024...and leading into 2025."
"These are all deaths from overdoses...I mean that's kind of crazy."
"Look at that drop!"
"Between 2023 and 2024, that's the peak where people are dying. And then from the time Trump's in office, it's taking a F*CKING SHARP down turn!"
This is the chart (archived here) titled "Annual Drug Overdose Death (DOD) Rates by US Census Region From October 2015 to October 2024":
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of jamanetwork.com)
The chart originated in a report (archived here) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) titled "Decline in US Drug Overdose Deaths by Region, Substance, and Demographics" published online on June 12, 2025. Researchers were addressing the question "When did US drug overdose deaths (DODs) begin to decelerate, and was that decline uniform across substances and demographics?"
This repeated cross-sectional study of DOD rates was conducted from January 2015 to October 2024, using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and US Census Bureau. Decedents included those whose drug poisoning death was classified as unintentional, intentional (suicide or homicide), or undetermined intent, identified by International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision codes for external overdose causes and T codes for opioids, cocaine, and psychostimulants (eg, methamphetamine).
The study counted 800,645 drug overdose deaths of U.S. residents over the 10 years from January 2015 through October 2024. The rate of deaths began a 15-month decline in August 2023, with the sharpest drop in the last nine months leading to October 2024, the report said.
Joe Biden's presidency ended and Donald Trump's second term began at noon, January 20, 2025.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi also misrepresented the drug overdose chart when she posted it on her X account on December 30, 2025, suggesting that the decline was the result of the Trump administration "aggressively prosecuting drug traffickers and cartel leaders." She deleted her post soon after it was called into question.
Podcaster Joe Rogan repeated the false claim in Show #172 of The Joe Rogan Experience posted on January 1, 2026.
