On September 2, the United States military struck a small boat speeding through the Caribbean. The Trump administration claimed the 11 people killed by the airstrike were drug smugglers, offering no proof or information about their identities. Experts wondered why 11 people would have been on board the boat if it was being used to transport drugs—given only two or three would be needed to pilot it, leaving more room for its valuable cargo. It would not be a shock to learn that the administration had taken out a boatload of migrants.
Regardless, President Donald Trump justified the act as a new front in a very literal drug war. “Let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” he said. “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vice President JD Vance posted.
Over the course of the week, government officials pledged to take more military action against alleged drug-trafficking groups in Latin America.
“They say they want to protect Americans from drugs, but their policies don’t match these words. They’re cutting services that save lives.”
Yet as members of the Trump administration bluster about military drug-war escapades in multiple countries, they’re simultaneously gutting federal programs that provide crucial care for people who use drugs or suffer from mental illness—actions that may be less dramatic, but have at least as much deadly threat.
“They say they want to protect Americans from drugs, but their policies don’t match these words,” Hanna Sharif-Kazemi, policy manager with the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) Office of Federal Affairs, told Filter. “They’re cutting services that save lives.”
A new tracker created by DPA and the Legal Action Center outlines the staggering array of cuts to federal programs that fund services that people who use, or have used, drugs rely on to stay healthy and safe.
In 2024, overdose deaths dropped by a substantial 27 percent, the CDC reports, after a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. The steady decrease is significantly attributed to harm reduction efforts like increased access to naloxone and medications for opioid use disorder. The administration’s cuts, drug policy experts say, will be catastrophic, halting the downward trend in overdoses and leading to more large-scale death and suffering.
The administration is demanding a massive shakeup of the Department of Health and Human Services that will likely dismantle SAMHSA.
The administration has already pulled $345 million from federal programs that fund services around the country and $588 million from drug research. Medicaid is the largest provider of substance use disorder treatment, according to a report by the Brookings Institute, and its budget has been slashed by $1 trillion over the next decade.
Now, the administration is demanding a massive shakeup of the Department of Health and Human Services that will likely dismantle the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The elimination of SAMHSA would see an estimated $26 billion more pulled from overdose prevention and addiction care.
Virtually no US program designed to help people who use drugs won’t be affected. SAMHSA funds naloxone distribution and training, treatment programs and access to medications. The agency also helps people in underserved rural areas obtain treatment. HHS, its parent department, is expected to lay off 20,000 federal employees.
“The landscape is brutal,” Sharif-Kazemi said. “We are seeing the end of services people are relying on to stay alive.”
The situation on the ground has already gotten grim. Sharif-Kazemi pointed to a Wisconsin treatment center that had to shut down, which provided treatment for women with children. Hundreds of peer recovery staff were laid off, drastically jeopardizing patients’ own path to recovery. After losing a DOJ grant, a North Carolina nonprofit will no longer help people into treatment instead of jail, according to the tracker. Texas shut down a 24/7 addiction and mental health support line due to lost funding.
“I can’t stop thinking about the parent who won’t have naloxone on hand to reverse an overdose and save their child’s life.”
The impact of the cuts will only get worse over time. Unlike the federal government, states have to balance their annual budgets. So programs that are left primarily relying on state, rather than federal, funds will be further impacted.
Lawmakers have decried previous cuts impacting their states. “At a time when New York is facing an ongoing opioid epidemic, multiple confirmed cases of measles and an ongoing mental health crisis, these cuts will be devastating,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in March, after an initial round had been announced. “There is no state in this country that has the financial resources to backfill the massive federal funding cuts.”
“I can’t stop thinking about the parent who won’t have naloxone on hand to reverse an overdose and save their child’s life,” Sharif-Kazemi said. “Or a person who can’t access buprenorphine to check their cravings, relapses.”
She sees no logic, only cruelty, when harm reduction interventions and other public health spending can ultimately save money, as well as lives.
“It’s truly devastating,” she concluded. The Trump administration tries to justify their War on Drugs as a way to keep Americans safe from drugs. Their actions make us far less safe.”
Photograph via PXHere/Public Domain