Trump could make some ‘killer’ cuts
THE OFFICIAL website for the Office of National Drug Control Policy greeted recent visitors with a simple message: “Check back soon for more information.”
For the 91 Americans who die each day from an opioid overdose, that’s not soon enough.
The Trump administration is pondering a massive funding cut that would neuter the organization leading the national fight against the drug epidemic. The office, launched under the Reagan administration in 1988, could die before its 30th birthday — like an increasing number of the nation’s drug addicts.
In the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of heroin users aged 18 to 25 has more than doubled. Opioid overdose totals increased steadily from coast to coast over 16 years, tripling between 1999 and 2014 before topping out in 2015.
The Trump budget proposal for fiscal 2017 was expected to slash the agency’s $388 million budget to a mere $24 million. The proposal would also eliminate 33 jobs at the drug control policy office, nearly 50% of its staff, whack $254 million to battle drug-dealing and slash another $100 million from the drugfree communities program.
The plan, even in this era of partisan political division, was derided by senators on both sides of the aisle. In New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer blasted the possible loss of funding for the federally funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.
“Any proposal to eliminate funding for programs, like the successful and vital (drug trafficking group), would effectively make our neighborhoods less safe,” Schumer said. “Any cuts will take the legs out of our antidrug interdiction efforts.”
There are 24 New York counties receiving money from the program, which is administered by the drug control policy group. The funding comes when the agency determines an area is struggling with a major drug trafficking problem.
The CDC lays out the numbers illustrating the U.S. opioid epidemic: Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioids sold has increased fourfold across the country — although the average American reports no change in the amount of their pain.
The latest CDC figures show 33,091 people died of opioid overdoses in 2015, the most recent year from which statistics are available. Three out of every five fatal overdose victims nationally died using opioids. In New York State, there was an increase of 20.4% in the number of opioid deaths for the same year.
That wasn’t enough to land New York in the top five states for opioid overdoses: West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio and Rhode Island all suffered through a more lethal 12 months.
Ohio’s two senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, spoke in a single voice against the proposed dismantling of the drug control policy group.
If the cuts are made, Brown said bluntly, Trump “will need to explain himself to the families whose loved ones have been taken by this epidemic and to the Ohio county morgues who’ve had to bring in extra refrigerated trucks to keep up with the overdose deaths in our state.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (DConn.), in a pointed letter to the White House, blasted the President’s “indifference to the importance of this office.”
The CDC report illustrates how opioid use crosses all demographics. Deaths rates increased among men and women, blacks and whites. Methadone deaths increased among people aged 65 and older. Between 2010 and 2015, 30 of the nation’s 50 states — along with Washington, D.C. — reported an increase in overdose deaths.
Under the Obama administration, the drug control policy group focused on drug intervention and prevention programs, steering nonviolent offenders into treatment instead of jail and expanding access — through Obamacare — to substance abuse treatment facilities.
Under the Trump administration, the agency’s future is uncertain — almost as certain as the drug crisis is likely to grow.