Florida buried 5,302 people from fentanyl in a single year – 2020 – and Democrats told you nothing could be done.
Now the numbers prove them wrong.
DeSantis just announced a 46% collapse in fentanyl deaths, and the liberals who called his approach cruel are very, very quiet.
What Florida Actually Did While Other States Watched People Die
The answer is not complicated.
DeSantis built the State Assistance for Fentanyl Eradication program – the SAFE grant – in 2023 and handed law enforcement the resources to go hunting.
Three thousand arrests.
Six hundred pounds of fentanyl seized.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2054585158846783878?s=20
Sixty-five thousand fentanyl pills – enough poison to wipe out a third of the country – pulled off Florida streets before it reached a single vein.
FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass did not mince words about the mission: "FDLE, alongside our sheriffs and police chiefs, are making Florida the least hospitable state in America for cartel activity."
Not the most compassionate. Not the most understanding. The least hospitable.
That framing matters.
The cartel members running fentanyl into your neighborhoods are not misunderstood community members.
They are businessmen who profit on corpses.
Florida decided to treat them accordingly.
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey put it plainly – DeSantis did not acknowledge the problem and move on.
He actually fixed it by putting resources behind law enforcement and standing behind the officers doing the work.
The Numbers the National Media Will Not Touch
The new FDLE report is not a minor statistical blip.
Fentanyl deaths: down 46%.
Opioid deaths overall: down 42%.
Total drug deaths: down 19%.
Cocaine deaths: down 24%.
Methamphetamine deaths: down 31%.
Every major category. Every single one.
This is not a national trend carrying Florida along.
The same national data showing overall improvement also shows seven states where overdose deaths went up – including jumps of 10% or more in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2054613692415643694?s=20
Florida did not drift downward. Florida drove downward.
The state also launched the Coordinated Opioid Recovery program – the CORE initiative – which moves overdose survivors directly from the emergency room into long-term treatment rather than sending them back to the same environment that nearly killed them.
DeSantis combined aggressive arrest and seizure operations with a real off-ramp for people who want out.
That is the full-spectrum approach Democrats claim to support but never actually build.
What Biden Built Instead
While Florida was seizing cartel fentanyl by the pound, the Biden administration treated the open southern border like a civil rights priority.
The cartels – the same Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation operations Florida is now dismantling cell by cell – ran fentanyl through that border like a supply chain.
Fentanyl deaths nationally climbed from 2013 straight through 2022 without interruption – a nearly unbroken decade of carnage.
Florida peaked in 2021 and has fallen every year since.
Here is what makes today's numbers genuinely stunning: the entire country has been improving.
Nationally, fentanyl overdose deaths fell 35.6% between 2023 and 2024 – the largest single-year decline on record.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2054589397496963116?s=20
Florida dropped 46%.
Ten full points ahead of the national pace. In a state of 23 million people. While simultaneously dismantling Gulf Cartel pipelines moving monthly truckloads of product into Jacksonville.
DeSantis warned at today's press conference that liberal judges handing light sentences to fentanyl traffickers are undermining those gains in real time.
He is right.
A state can make 3,000 arrests and pull 600 pounds of poison off the street, but if a judge treats fentanyl trafficking as a nonviolent offense deserving leniency, the cartel simply cycles in new operators.
DeSantis made the case plainly: peddling fentanyl to children is homicide. It should be sentenced accordingly.
A drug dealer who hands a child a pill laced with fentanyl – one microgram of which is a lethal dose, invisible to the naked eye – has made a lethal decision.
The law should reflect that.
Sources:
- Michelle Vecerina, "DeSantis touts 46% drop in Florida fentanyl deaths following drug crackdown and recovery programs," FL Voice News, May 13, 2026.
- Florida Department of Law Enforcement, "Florida achieves significant decline in opioid and drug-related deaths in 2024," FDLE Press Release, October 16, 2025.
- Executive Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces SAFE Program Delivers Record Seizures of Fentanyl," flgov.com, September 2, 2025.
- Matthew F. Garnett and Arialdi M. Miniño, "Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2023–2024," CDC National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief No. 549, 2025.
