Trump Will Not Be Funding Programs to Combat It
Last year, 64,000 people died from drug overdoses. Throughout the presidential campaign Donald Trump repeatedly promised voters he would attack America’s out of control opioid crisis. One year ago this week, in an attempt to win New Hampshire voters, Trump “held” a roundtable on the crisis of heroin addiction. Gauge for yourself how interested and informed he was:
In July, a White House commission released a report urging the president to declare opioids a national emergency.
One month later, having not acted, reporters pressed Trump.
Here’s how HuffPost reported the interaction:
“The opioid crisis is an emergency and I’m saying officially right now it is an emergency. It’s a national emergency,†he told reporters Thursday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, following a lunch with Vice President Mike Pence.
“We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,†he continued, adding that he was “drawing documents now†to make the official declaration.
Trump’s comments mark a reversal from earlier this week, when he was briefed on the matter in a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and other White House officials.
According to Price, Trump did not think the situation required an official emergency declaration, an action which would allow him to allocate additional government resources to fighting the epidemic.
And now, two months after promising to label the opioid crisis “a national emergency,” after promising to “spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,” Trump will do exactly not that.
Despite today’s hype and headlines, Trump will declare a “public health emergency for opioids,” not a national emergency, and there’s a big difference: money and time.
USA Today calls Trump’s move “a partial measure to fight drug epidemic.”
Politico makes it clear: Trump’s move today “is narrower in scope than what his opioid commission had recommended and does not include new funding.”
A “public health emergency” by law is time-limited. It ends after 13 weeks, unless renewed.
No new funding for a crisis that now kills “more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined.”
In short, Trump is treating the opioid crisis like everything else: a photo op.
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