— President Trump, speaking at a drug abuse summit in Atlanta, April 24, 2019
During a recent speech on the administration’s efforts to ease the opioid crisis, President Trump asserted that his administration had already achieved its goal of cutting nationwide opioid prescriptions by one-third.
Trump’s original goal, made on March 19, 2018, was to reach this target within three years. So obviously we were curious about whether the claim about already reaching the milestone within a year was valid.
Here’s what we found out. It’s an interesting tale of how data generated in the administration loses its nuance the closer it gets to the president’s lips.