“White House aides and a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are cheering $6 billion in new funding to fight the opioid crisis in the recently approved budget deal, but treatment advocates and drug policy experts are concerned the uptick in funding won’t be spent wisely and isn’t nearly enough.
Those concerns stem from the tough-on-crime rhetoric that the Trump administration has employed in recent months, leading treatment advocates in states to worry that opioid addiction — something President Donald Trump seized on during the 2016 campaign — will be treated as a law enforcement, not a health, issue. If money is diverted from treatment to tackle crime, advocates said, the already small amount of money going towards the problem will do even less.
A White House official told CNN on Thursday that the Trump administration has told appropriators in Congress, who are now tasked with spending the $6 billion, that they would like to see the influx of cash spent on both treatment and law enforcement priorities.”
Read more at: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/politics/opioid-treatment-funding/index.html
Source: CNN.com – February 9, 2018
See related article: Trump Budget Sharply Cuts White House Office Leading Opioid Crisis Response, Shifts Funds to Other Agencies available at: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-budget-sharply-cuts-white-house-office-leading/story?id=53027992
See related article: What Trump’s Budget Would Mean for Your Medical Bills available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-trumps-budget-would-mean-for-your-medical-bills/
See related article: The Health 202: Trump’s budget shows he is serious about tackling the opioid crisis available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/02/13/the-health-202-trump-s-budget-shows-he-is-serious-about-tackling-the-opioid-crisis/5a81de0130fb041c3c7d780f/?utm_term=.ad53830ee7ca
See related article: 30 experts were asked how they’d fight the opioid crisis. None mentioned a border wall available at: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/14/17011646/opioid-epidemic-trump-border-wall
