Die Sicht der Amerikaner auf die Drogenkrise: Den Republikanern wird der allgemeine Zustand der Drogenproblematik mit der Zeit schlechter, während es den Demokraten im Allgemeinen etwas besser geht. Dieser parteiische Effekt hat seit Mitte der 2010er Jahre zugenommen.
https://sph.brown.edu/news/2026-07-09/saloner-gallup-drug
20 Kommentare
**Progress, problems and partisanship: Americans’ view of the drug crisis**
In the majority of years between 2000-2025, **fewer than half of Americans perceived progress against illicit drugs.** Perceived progress was at its lowest ebb in 2023, at just over 23%, and rose in 2025 to 44%.
Saloner also found that we are **more likely to perceive progress when our preferred politician is in the White House.** This partisan effect, which has grown since the mid-2010s, is illustrated by the 54-point increase in Republican perceptions of progress between 2023-2025.
Finally, the study shows that **most Americans see drugs as a serious problem nationally, while only a minority see a drug problem in their own communities.**
What surprised you most about your findings?
**Saloner:** A few things really stuck out to me. The first thing I would note is that, overall, there’s no year in which a majority of people say we’re making progress, which is interesting. People are not, generally speaking, seeing this as an issue that we’re winning.
Then there’s the element of partisanship, which is not surprising. People tend to say that many issues get better when people from their party control the government, whether it’s education, crime or health care. That’s true regardless of whether, objectively, the measured progress is increasing.
But partisanship is increasing a lot on drug policy issues. If you go back to October 2000, which was right at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, Democrats were feeling a little bit better than Republicans. Now, fast forward to the start of the first Trump presidency, and then going into the Biden years, and now into Trump II — you see these huge swings in public perception.
The period of 2023-2025 perfectly encapsulates that. In 2023, Republicans registered very low rates of approval with the drug issue. By 2025, their approval rate had shot up by over 50 points. Democrats, on the other hand, weren’t feeling great about it in 2023, and they felt maybe even a little worse in 2025. So people are really interpreting and understanding this issue through the lens of their own political affiliation.
It’s also worth mentioning that beginning in October 2025 the Trump administration began blowing up alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. They were saying that they were going to go to war on drug cartels in Mexico. They were going to put tariffs on Canada because of fentanyl. They were making a big set of statements around the fentanyl crisis, and I guess, within a certain constituency, that was being well received. I think that’s what these data would tell us.
Another trend in the data is that people are much more likely to see drugs as a problem nationally, than in their own communities. That’s always been true. But the interesting thing is that Republicans are starting to feel worse over time about the general state of the drug problem, while Democrats are generally feeling a little bit better. This is surprising to me both because Democrats are more likely to say that someone in their family has a drug problem and because the drug problem is getting worse on a lot of measures.
The drug overdose rates today are much worse than they were in 2000. So, in that sense, there’s not a lot of correlation between the objective situation and what people are perceiving.
People are really interpreting and understanding this issue through the lens of their own political affiliation.
https://www.ovid.com/jnls/journaladdictionmedicine/abstract/10.1097/adm.0000000000001740~trends-in-public-opinion-about-us-illicit-drug-policy
Jfc why is everything in America political
What about those that don’t identify as Republican or Democrat? Or are there only two ways to see the world?
Have you been to rural areas? Drugs and crime are rampant.
Well that is because it is still bad in rural and less wealthy areas.
Maybe Trump shouldn’t have pardoned the guy last year convicted of “checks notes” importing 400 tons of cocaine into the Country.
The republican problem with drugs: they want to do them but vote to keep them illegal.
The government is a sad pathetic joke. It would be better if it were in the hands of a corpse vs the United States government
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/24/nx-s1-5328157/fentanyl-overdose-death-drugs
Many areas report year over year declines. Personally, I wonder if the demographic that uses fentanyl simply got depopulated. You can’t die of a drug overdose this year if you already did two years ago.
Probably because Democrat controlled cities and states have been active in attempts to combat addiction amd preventing OD’s for last 40 years and Republican/Rural areas still haven’t begun
That isnt terribly surprising. The divide between the parties is primarily Urban vs Rural, and rural communities have far less oversight and far more issues with things like meth trailers, amateur chemists cooking up god knows what, and moonshine.
Urban areas have these issues to a degree too, but there’s also a larger police presence. And the police presence in Urban areas are not as oriented around gladhanding and „Keeping Cousin Billy Bob“ out of trouble.
It’s because Republicans are horrible are governing so their rural communities face high crime and self abuse.
I desperately wish people would do what the science days to do about this instead of constantly being partisan about everything. The answers exist, we know how to drastically reduce both addiction and addiction related deaths, we just continuously refuse to properly implement those policies. It’s always half measures at best, then retracting when those half measures fail because they are poorly implemented, or even the political party switches power.
>But the problem has still grown considerably since [2000](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/drug_poisoning/drug_poisoning.htm), when there were [300%](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20260513.html) fewer deaths than there are today.
Trump statistics are now used at Brown University.
Look at which areas in the United States has been hit worse by the opioid crisis. It’s largely been red states with turndowns in manufacturing and coal industries.
“But the war has not gone well”
Hmm ok.
I think they misspelled “humanitarian crisis”, or maybe “racial and economic genocide.”
Can we please get away from opting into the “war on” language about drug policy, even when we critique it? It’s a really monstruous way to dissociate society as a whole from what it really is.
No we’re not “losing” the war on drugs. We’re killing people by removing access to healthcare, basic needs, safety, family support; and then finally even the few remaining coping mechanisms people tend to have when everything else is lost or in question. And then when our war crimes inevitably lead people to life threatening circumstances we block through both legislation and stigma access to life saving care.
The abundance and availability of naloxone is the single greatest leap in the drug pandemic. Way fewer deaths. Same old addiction. But living people are good.
Do the two parties even agree on what the drug problem actually is? I’m guessing they don’t, and that this is at the root of the differences in how they feel about it.
Maybe republicans tried to fight a war against them so drugs won and moved into thier home terf.
Trump was supposed to fix it but, you know, ballrooms, pools, cats and dogs getting eaten…