The Trump Admin Praises Narcan While Defunding It. Don’t Fall for It.

While they posture for cameras, people will die in bathrooms and bedrooms with no help. Everyone knows someone who’s lost someone. Now the lifelines that work are being cut away.

I fight illicit fentanyl every day. That is not a metaphor. It is what my nonprofit does. I won’t name it here, because that would be the same as doxxing myself.

But I’ll tell you what we do. We hand out Narcan (Naloxone) a medication that reverses opioid overdose. We pass out fentanyl test strips so people can make sure they aren’t getting something laced. We give people the “never use alone” hotline so that if they stop responding, someone calls for help. We deal with the aftermath, the wreckage, the grief that fentanyl leaves in its wake.

I started this work some time ago because I lost someone I loved to fentanyl. Laced into something else they were using. They were barely thirty, with years ahead of them and then they were gone, like a match blown out in the dark.

And then I get on my phone and see Donald Trump and his cronies using that pain as a billboard for fascism. Repeatedly. Lying to people to get him on their side. In my work, I see so many families gutted by fentanyl loss pulled in by his con. He’s not comforting the grieving; he’s feeding on them and it’s enough to make you feel sick.

War on illicit fentanyl? No, it’s really a war on people: the poor, the immigrant, the homeless, the mentally ill. That is what makes me furious.

There is no sugarcoating it. More people are going to die. You’ll see it in the obituaries, in the morgues, on the bathroom floors where families find the bodies of their kids. That’s the legacy of his “war on fentanyl.”

Why People Are Going to Die

Narcan works only if you have it. Only if it’s in the hands of the friend, the mom, the stranger in the bathroom stall, the EMT who gets there two minutes too late without it. When federal funding dries up, the shelves at CVS may still carry it for $40–$50, but people in recovery houses, shelters, and homeless encampments won’t have it.

The people who actually need it the most will be priced out. Every kit that isn’t there means another body bag. All it means is one contaminated line of coke at a party, a Xanax bought from someone you don’t know, a pill cut with fentanyl by a dealer looking to stretch the bag and suddenly the heart stops, the breathing slows, the lips turn blue.

Fentanyl test strips — which allow people to test their stash — they are dirt cheap, pennies apiece. But they don’t magically appear in people’s hands. They come from the same public health programs Trump is gutting. Without them, people roll the dice blind.

Recently, at an event I had an an elderly Air Force veteran — yes, an elderly veteran — tell me about the moment he watched his friend collapse. His buddy thought he was picking up a bag of cocaine, but it was fentanyl. He used it and dropped right in front of him. The veteran did the only thing he knew he could do and he gave him Narcan. He saved his friend’s life.

I handed him another box of Narcan to replenish what he had and some fentanyl test strips to take home. Truthfully, I fear I will not be able to do that much longer because of the cuts to come.

SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) is being gutted. This is the backbone of our national overdose response being broken like it’s Rudy Giuliani.

Over 10,000 people gutted from the agency earlier this year while Trump’s been “fighting fentanyl” used as a mask for the tariff wars enacted on foreign governments who didn’t kiss his ass.

SAMHSA is the very reason Narcan ends up free in a shelter, not locked behind a pharmacy counter. It works by taking federal dollars and turning them into funding for programs that provide tools for overdose reversals, treatment slots, data — the things that actually work. But here’s the thing:

• The Trump administrations cuts take a billion dollars from SAMHSA. Staff slashed in half. Programs shut down. The $56 million first responder grant that trains people to use Narcan? Gone.

• The FR-CARA grants that keep naloxone kits stocked in rural fire stations and with street medics? Gone.

• Peer recovery coaches, syringe service programs, community drop-in centers? Starved of funds until they vanish.

And it’s not just money. By merging SAMHSA into the so-called RFK Jr led, “Administration for a Healthy America” bullshit they’re also erasing entire teams of scientists, data collectors, and grant administrators.

These are the people who track where overdoses are happening, who coordinate state responses, who actually know what works. Without them, we’re blind. That’s the point. No data, no accountability. Just rising body counts hidden under the rug. But they can deny it happened because we won’t have any data to prove otherwise.

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Medicaid Cuts Mean More Overdoses, More Deaths

Medicaid pays for sixty percent of addiction treatment in this country. You cut Medicaid, you cut the lifeline. Without it, 1.6 million people could lose access to methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone, and even Narcan. The only medications proven to keep opioid users alive. Take them away and relapse isn’t a maybe. It’s a certainty.

Let me tell you something I’ve seen in my work. Overdose follows relapse like thunder follows lightning.

Why? Because when someone stops using, even for a short time, their tolerance drops. Their body cannot handle the same amount it once could. But the brain still remembers the old dose, and in a moment of relapse, that is what people go back to.

This brings me back to an interaction I had at my recent Narcan distribution event on National Overdose Awareness Day, a woman looked me in the eye and told me the truth:

“If I stopped taking my Suboxone, I would start popping Perc-30’s (Percocet 30mg pills) again. I cannot survive without it.”

She was not exaggerating. She was naming her reality, and the reality of thousands of others. And when now when people relapse, when people need help, instead of a clinic, they’ll get a cage.

Trump’s executive orders criminalize addiction and homelessness, funneling people into jails and forced institutions ran by the very people funded his campaign in the first place.

But prison doesn’t treat withdrawal. Prison kills. You can trace the death certificates before the arrests even happen. It’ll start when the big ugly bill cuts come. When SAMHSA cuts hit. When Narcan is no longer readily available to have on hand.

When people with addiction and mental health issues lose Medicaid, and can’t get treatment so instead they’re locked away under his executive orders.
That is when the truth will show.

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I’m an RN, and RFK Jr’s Leadership Means Death

RFK Jr. is not a misunderstood visionary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a clear case of privilege. He spent years hooked on heroin, cocaine. In 1983 he was arrested because he was selling it to others, but instead of going to prison like most people would, he was sent to treatment because of his family name. He calls that moment a “spiritual awakening.” The truth is, millions of others with the same struggles ended up locked up or dead. His

He had the audacity to tell the rest of us that antidepressants are “basically heroin” and no, Bobby, they are not.

One restores serotonin balance in the brain. The other hijacks the mu-opioid receptor in the brain and stops your breathing. Confusing the two is not a brave stance. It is medical illiteracy and medical illiteracy from someone with influence is lethal. We aren’t talking enough about how his only “medical” background comes from YouTube conspiracy theories.

He has cut off funding, shut down research, and left people with substance use disorder without support. Which is insane given his background. But not only that…

• He has destabilized the CDC causing staff to revolt, sabotaged outbreak responses with pseudoscience, and dismantled compensation programs that protect patients. He is not speaking truth to power. He is speaking nonsense to the desperate and nonsense kills.

• He has also pushed the idea of “wellness farms” where people would be cut off from important medications — specifically psychiatric ones — including some of the same ones he very well could benefit from.

• He fired CDC experts who would not echo his anti-vaccine views.

• During the ongoing measles outbreak, instead of pushing vaccines, he told people to use vitamins and cod liver oil.

• As of mid-2025, the U.S. has recorded its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, with nearly 1,300 confirmed cases, at least three deaths, and hundreds hospitalized. The highest numbers since 1992.

That advice risked children’s lives while proven protections were ignored. His actions weaken public health, destroy trust, and lead to more preventable deaths.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a visionary. He is living proof of what happens when arrogance and bad science are handed authority.

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The Lies You Were Told About the Border and Fentanyl

We have been told again and again that fentanyl is carried across the desert by migrants or hidden in backpacks as people climb fences. Politicians repeat this story because it is simple and because it shifts blame onto the most vulnerable. It stirs fear and props up border crackdowns, but it is not the truth.

The truth is that most fentanyl enters the United States through legal ports of entry. It is hidden in cars and trucks driven by U.S. citizens, not sneaky migrants.

DHS themselves have reported that more than 90 percent of seizures happen at these government-operated checkpoints, often in gas tanks, spare tires, or door panels. Just a few pounds are worth millions, so traffickers only need one successful trip.

Once inside, fentanyl spreads through a vast network, pressed into counterfeit pills or mixed with heroin and cocaine. People rarely know they are taking it, which is why overdoses happen so quickly and in such high numbers. Immigrants crossing the border to save their own lives are not killing our people. Our people are killing our people. Powered by greed.

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Where This Leaves Us:

Where this leaves us is simple. More deaths are coming, not because fentanyl is unstoppable, but because the tools that save lives are being ripped away. This so-called “war on fentanyl” is really a war on people, and unless we fight back, the body count will grow.

Do not let them bury the truth along with the dead. Call your representatives, demand funding for harm reduction, support Medicaid, share this story, and if you can, donate to the frontline groups keeping Narcan, test strips, and treatment alive. Lives depend on it.

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Goodbye Until We Meet Again…. ♥

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