While there are so many discouraging things going on in the world right now, here is some good news to report: Deaths by the horrible and poisonous drug fentanyl have been in decline. While the opioid addiction crisis rages on, fentanyl — the worst of the new drugs — is not killing as many people as it once was.

Starting in the summer of 2023, fentanyl deaths began to plummet. Today, that drop is still holding, and experts are looking into why.

Photo credit: Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Reuter, Washington Post

According to professors Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University and Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, it’s because of China. Why? Well, because the drop in deaths occurred in both Canada and the United States.

Canada and the U.S. have drugs entering in drastically different ways. Canada orders the precursor drugs directly from China. In the U.S., illicit drugs are smuggled over the border from Mexico, where the drugmakers produce fentanyl with precursors from China. Both countries experienced a drop-off at around the same time.

Starting in about mid-2023, drug users began noticing that suppliers were experiencing a “fentanyl drought.” According to The Washington Post, the change occurred because of former President Joe Biden putting pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping to crack down on the pharmaceutical manufacturers making the fentanyl precursors. After a meeting between the two leaders in November 2023, China arrested 300 people and restricted 55 additional synthetic substances.

“In a statement,” according to the Post, “the Chinese Embassy said the country’s broad efforts to combat the spread of deadly synthetic drugs [have] achieved ‘remarkable results.’ The embassy said that between October 2023 and August 2025, the Chinese government shut down 286 companies and forced more than 500 to delete information on chemical sales. About 160,000 ads were removed in that time, the statement said.”

The embassy ended its statement by asserting, “China has been helping the U.S. tackle the fentanyl issue and is willing to continue the cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect.”

While the drop in fentanyl overdoses in Canada and the U.S. points to a supply chain disruption, the timing isn’t perfect. November 2023 is months after people started noticing a drop in fentanyl.

It’s also hard to believe that the cognitively addled former President Biden was able to talk China into cracking down on the precursor drug supply.

One point that Caulkins and Reuter make is that drug droughts don’t last. “For example,” they note, “multiple rounds of controls on various precursors used in methamphetamine production have interrupted supply for only 3 to 12 months (if at all) before producers found another precursor or another source of the old one. The fentanyl reduction has already lasted two years, which is surprisingly long if the origin was disruption of precursors.”

What other explanations are there? Perhaps Chinese officials saw the writing on the wall politically and foresaw that Trump was returning; ergo, they better play ball. And closing the southern border certainly helped cut off the supply line.

There are probably multiple explanations for the “fentanyl drought” and lower death rate. Regardless, this is good news, and we hope it continues.