11 August, 2017
President Donald Trump on Thursday declared the country's opioid crisis a national emergency, saying the epidemic exceeded anything he had seen with other drugs in his lifetime.
Treatment providers and addiction specialists in MA welcomed President Trump's decision Thursday to declare a national emergency over the opioid epidemic - but stressed that they hope the president will put significant money into the effort.
Instead, Trump, who met with administration officials about the crisis on Tuesday, said the best way to avoid the problem would be for people to never abuse drugs.
A formal declaration of a public health emergency, or a presidential emergency declaration, would give the administration additional powers to waive health regulations, pay for treatment programs, and make overdose-reversing drugs more widely available, local analysts say.
The Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, established by President Trump via an executive order in March, first recommended the president make such a declaration in its interim report released July 31.
A recent report found that 142 people died from drugs abuse in the United States every day - a toll which is "equal to September 11 every three weeks". In 2016, under President Barack Obama, Congress approved $1 billion in funding over two years to help states fight the epidemic, but deaths from drug overdoses are continuing to rise.
A series of studies, however, have found one of the key variables in opioid addiction is a doctor's prescription, with many overdose deaths stemming from prescription opioid medications. But last week, the commission issued a preliminary report urging the president to immediately "declare a national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act".
Trump's Health and Human Services secretary says declaring an emergency would be a mostly symbolic gesture.
NPR contacted the White House for more details about who was drawing the papers and how an emergency declaration would be implemented.
The report also called on Washington to grant waiver approvals to all 50 states to eliminate barriers and allow treatment at Medicaid-funded residential facilities, a move it said would rapidly increase treatment capacity. "It's a national emergency", Trump said earlier at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
National estimates found almost 33,000 people died in 2015 due to opioid overdose, but several reports have found even those numbers could be severely underreported, meaning the total number of overdoses could be much higher. He added, however, that all options including a declaration of emergency were still on the table. His reversal is the right thing to do, for Americans are living in a national emergency.
The biggest impediment to many of these recommendations is that they run counter to the Trump administration's rhetoric about substance abuse and medical care. "It takes money to get the beds up and running", Newton said. This follows a special commission's recommendation that Trump treat drugs as a national emergency. The Department of Health and Human Services declared one in Puerto Rico past year after more than 10,000 Zika cases were reported there.
