United States President Donald Trump has mentioned current navy strikes on 5 Venezuelan boats have saved “not less than 100,000 lives” as a result of the manoeuvres have thwarted drug smuggling.
“Each boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives, so each time you see a ship and you’re feeling badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s tough’: It’s tough, however for those who lose three individuals and save 25,000 individuals,” President Donald Trump mentioned at an October 15 media convention.
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The administration didn’t provide PolitiFact with proof that the boats had been carrying medicine. Drug specialists instructed PolitiFact that Venezuela performs a minor function in trafficking medicine that attain the US. The legality of the strikes can be unclear. After the primary assault in early September, some authorized specialists instructed PolitiFact that the navy motion was unlawful underneath maritime regulation or human rights conventions, and the assault contradicted longstanding US navy practices.
Trump has used the determine repeatedly and in addition says he would think about comparable strikes on land.
“Each a kind of boats is chargeable for the dying of 25,000 American individuals, and the destruction of households,” Trump mentioned in an October 5 speech to US Navy sailors. “So whenever you consider it that method, what we’re doing is definitely an act of kindness.
“We’ve taken a really arduous stand on medicine … the water medicine – the medicine that are available by means of water, they’re not coming – there are not any boats any extra, frankly, there are not any fishing boats, there’s no boats on the market, interval,” Trump instructed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on October 7. “We’ve most likely saved not less than 100,000 lives, American lives, Canadian lives, by taking out these boats.”
A number of features of Trump’s assertion make it incorrect.
There isn’t any method of realizing what number of lives are saved on account of drug interception efforts, drug specialists have instructed PolitiFact.
Moreover, if Trump’s assertion had been correct, the strikes on 5 boats in lower than two months would have saved almost double the variety of US lives misplaced to drug overdoses in a whole yr.
Trump administration has offered no proof
The Trump administration hasn’t specified what sort of drug or what amount was on the boats that had been struck. So it’s not possible to calculate what number of lethal doses may have been destroyed.
Trump mentioned on the October 15 media convention that the boats had been carrying fentanyl.
“And you may see it, the boats get hit, and also you see that fentanyl everywhere in the ocean,” Trump mentioned. “It’s like floating in luggage. It’s everywhere.”
He has shared aerial movies of a few of the boat strikes on Reality Social, however no luggage of medicine are seen within the movies.
Moreover, most illicit fentanyl within the US comes from Mexico, not Venezuela. It enters the US primarily by means of the southern border at official ports of entry, and it’s smuggled in largely by US residents, based on the USA Sentencing Fee.
Even when there have been fentanyl on board, Trump’s assertion is mathematically doubtful
If the boats every carried 25,000 deadly doses, that doesn’t imply the strikes stopped 125,000 individuals from dying of a drug overdose.
“When medicine are seized, the availability chain partially replaces these misplaced medicine,” Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon College drug coverage researcher, beforehand instructed PolitiFact.
Overdose drug deaths have been declining for the previous couple of years, earlier than there have been any strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela, based on provisional knowledge from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
The CDC reported greater than 73,000 drug overdose deaths from Might 2024 to April 2025. For Trump’s assertion to be correct, the medicine on 5 boats would have been chargeable for 125,000 deaths, almost double the variety of overdose deaths in a single yr.
Drug interception knowledge doesn’t present what number of overdose deaths had been prevented
Trump isn’t the primary individual to equate drug enforcement with saving lives. Over time, we’ve fact-checked different politicians after they mentioned {that a} amount of medicine seized on the US border was sufficient to kill a selected variety of individuals, or that these seizures saved a selected variety of lives.
Typically, the politicians now we have fact-checked referred to fentanyl seizures. The artificial opioid is the main explanation for US overdose deaths. Politicians’ statements about lives saved depend on the deadly dose for fentanyl, two milligrams. So if authorities seized 10 milligrams of fentanyl, for instance, that saved 5 lives, politicians say.
However there are caveats to that calculation as a result of a dose’s lethality can differ based mostly on an individual’s top, weight and tolerance from previous publicity, drug specialists say. And statistics about what number of medicine had been stopped from getting into the US don’t account for what number of medicine make it into the nation.
“We don’t have any technique I’m conscious of for translating drug seizure knowledge into any measure of overdose deaths averted,” Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, a Johns Hopkins College well being coverage skilled, instructed PolitiFact in Might.
Our ruling
Relating to boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela, Trump mentioned: “Each boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”
Trump mentioned the 5 boats the US navy struck off the coast of Venezuela had been carrying medicine heading to the US. Nevertheless, specialists on medicine and Venezuela instructed PolitiFact the nation performs a minor function in trafficking medicine that attain the US.
The administration has offered no proof concerning the sort or amount of medicine it says had been on the boats. This lack of awareness makes it not possible to know what number of deadly doses of the medicine may have been destroyed.
Even when the boats had been carrying 25,000 deadly drug doses every, that doesn’t imply that destroying them saved 125,000 lives. There have been 73,000 US drug overdose deaths from Might 2024 to April 2025. Which means the medicine on 5 boats would have been chargeable for 125,000 deaths, almost double the variety of US overdose deaths in a single yr.
The quantity of medicine which are stopped from getting into the US doesn’t point out what number of lives had been saved.
We fee Trump’s assertion False.
