Youngkin advances wild claim about fentanyl deaths: Seriously, 85 million?

A press release from the office of Gov. Glenn Youngkin makes the eye-popping claim that the MAGA governor’s efforts to get fentanyl off the streets prevented 85 million deaths in Virginia over the past three-plus years.

Just to be clear here, Virginia’s population, as of the most recent Census, is 8.8 million.

Huh.

Something doesn’t seem to square up here.

In case you think I’m making this up, here’s a quote from Youngkin in the press release he had his people send out.

“We’ve interrupted the drug trade by launching Operation Free, an aggressive law enforcement partnership between federal, state and local agencies to crack down on the drug trade, which has so far seized enough fentanyl to kill every Virginian ten times over,” Youngkin said.

They’re serious about trying to scare the sh*t out of you on this, aren’t they?

Everybody else that has written about this has regurgitated the messaging from the MAGAs, when it would only have taken literally a minute to click on a link included in the press release to get the real numbers.

Data from the Virginia Department of Health shows fentanyl-related deaths in Virginia peaking at 2,039 in 2021, and dropping to 1,086 in 2024, which, impressive.

Note here: the period 2021-2024 coincides not only with Youngkin’s term in office in Richmond, but also Joe Biden’s term in office in D.C.

Youngkin noted in his statement that Operation Free is a partnership “between federal, state and local agencies.”

The federal agencies for those four years were on the watch of the Biden folks, who are now being blamed by the Trump folks for not doing anything to stop the flow of fentanyl across our borders, which is the flimsy basis for the Trump tariffs on our border neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and the mass deportations of a few criminals and a lot of innocent people who happen to be of the wrong skin color.

Now, of course, even 1,086 fentanyl-related deaths is 1,086 too many, so more work needs to be done.

But 1,086 isn’t 85 million.

It’s also not 1,184 – which is the number of gun-related deaths in Virginia in 2024, according to the VDH report that gives us the fentanyl number.

Tuesday was styled “National Fentanyl Awareness Day,” because the MAGAs need a crutch to base the tariffs and the mass deportations.

Wonder when we get “National Guns Kill a Lot of People Awareness Day,” since guns kill more people than fentanyl.

I already know the answer to that.