America Is Making Progress Against Fentanyl. We Can’t Let Up.

For a quarter century, the opioid epidemic has defined an era of loss in America. At its worst, it claimed more than 100,000 lives each year. Now that trajectory has begun to change. Overdose deaths are falling at a rate few expected. One reason is increasingly clear: we are beginning to stop fentanyl before it reaches our communities.

The latest federal data seemed improbable just a few years ago. Annual overdose deaths have declined from roughly 107,000 in 2022 to about 70,000 in 2025. The progress is significant, and it raises an essential question: what is driving it?

There is no single answer. Gains reflect sustained work on prevention, treatment, and recovery. But another factor, once underappreciated, is now harder to ignore: strategic pressure on the supply of synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl.

For years, fentanyl flooded into the United States. It is cheap, potent, and lethal in very small quantities. Confronting that threat required rethinking how to detect and intercept it before it reached our communities.

That was the premise behind the INTERDICT Act, which I advanced after seeing handheld detection devices capable of identifying fentanyl in seconds. The legislation, enacted in January 2018, supported advanced screening technologies, expanded laboratory capacity, and strengthened real-time detection, helping catalyze a broader shift.

Since then, Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, significantly increased funding for non-intrusive inspection technology. These systems, including drive-through scanners and advanced imaging tools, allow officers to identify hidden narcotics in vehicles and cargo without opening them. What began as relatively small appropriations has become a central pillar of the country’s drug interdiction strategy.

In fiscal year 2025, lawmakers provided more than $900 million for fentanyl detection, scanning technology, and related personnel and infrastructure. Those investments are designed to increase the share of vehicles and shipments screened at ports of entry along the southern border, where most fentanyl enters the United States, typically concealed in cars and trucks and most often transported by U.S. citizens. Strengthening screening at these crossings targets the primary pathways through which the drug moves into the country, and evidence suggests these efforts are having an effect.

Seizures have surged, from roughly 1,500 pounds of fentanyl in 2017 to more than 27,000 pounds in 2023. Each interception represents drugs that did not reach the market and potential harm that was avoided. This is what progress on the supply side looks like: improved tools, better intelligence, and sustained investment.

But supply is only part of the picture.

The opioid crisis is also a public health challenge. Enforcement alone cannot resolve it. Addiction often begins in pain, trauma, and isolation, and it requires treatment, support, and time to address. Even as efforts to intercept fentanyl have expanded, we have worked to strengthen the systems that help people recover.

That has meant expanding access to treatment, particularly in underserved communities, and modernizing outdated rules that have made it harder for people to receive lifesaving medications. It has also meant recognizing that recovery is an ongoing process, not a single intervention.

Harm reduction has played a role as well. When I introduced the resolution establishing Naloxone Awareness Day, it reflected a simple principle: preventing death creates the possibility of recovery. Naloxone has saved tens of thousands of lives.

Improving data and accountability has been critical. From civilian communities to service members and their families, better understanding the scope of the epidemic has helped guide more effective responses.

One lesson has become clear: supply and demand are not competing explanations but interconnected realities. The bipartisan Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, on which I served, emphasized that reducing the availability of fentanyl and reducing demand for it must proceed together.

Recent progress reflects that approach.

There is reason for cautious optimism, but not complacency. Tens of thousands of Americans still die each year from overdoses. The epidemic continues to evolve, and new synthetic compounds may emerge. The networks that traffic these drugs are adaptive, global, and persistent.

The response must be equally sustained. That means continuing to expand inspection capacity so more vehicles and cargo can be screened efficiently, maintaining investment in scientific analysis to identify emerging threats early, and deepening our commitment to prevention, treatment, recovery, and harm reduction.

This is not a choice between supply and demand. It is a requirement to address both.

For too long, the opioid epidemic defined an era of loss. The recent decline in deaths shows that trajectory can change. The task now is to ensure that it continues.