Ted Cruz: “Just a couple of years ago, we had more than 100,000…”

“Now, what does that mean? How does that impact our lives? Well, all across the nation, the murder rate has fallen 20%. The number of deaths from drug overdoses has fallen 20%. Just a couple of years ago, we had more than 100,000 Americans die of drug overdoses in a single year. To put that in perspective, that is nearly double the total number of Americans who died in the entirety of the Vietnam war. Just over 60,000Americans died in Vietnam.” (09:49–10:23)

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.