DEADLY DELAY
Trump drug panel ‘dragging feet’ – Chuck
THE TRUMP administration has missed two deadlines it set for itself to present a plan to fight the nation’s opioid crisis, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday, slamming the White House for prolonging a “national emergency.”
The Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis missed the deadlines to outline a strategy to battle the epidemic, opting instead to conduct more hearings and literature reviews, Schumer said.
“The administration and the commission needs to stop dragging its feet on steps that could help save lives,” the New York Democrat said, adding that the delay was not due to partisanship but simply an issue of “inertia.”
“There’s money available. The commission is supposed to put the best ways to spend that, and they haven’t done that,” he added.
President Trump signed an executive order in March that created the commission, which New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie chairs. The panel is to work closely with the White House Office of American Innovation, which Trump’s son-inlaw, Jared Kushner, leads.
“This is an epidemic that knows no boundaries and shows no mercy, and we will show great compassion and resolve as we work together on this important issue,” Trump said at the time.
In a letter to the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, Schumer and 19 other Democratic senators criticized the commission’s lack of urgency. They cited the Daily News’ coverage of the opioid crisis, noting there were 1,374 unintentional drug overdose deaths in New York City in 2016, compared with 937 the previous year.
The letter criticized Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who recently expressed skepticism about mainstream addiction treatments.
“(Price) vouched for methods that would ‘cure’ people of their opioid addiction,” the letter read. “Such rhetoric is archaic and out of line with the well-accepted fact that opioid addiction may require lifelong management as a chronic condition.”
Price said in May that medication-assisted treatments like methadone and buprenorphine were “substituting one opioid for another.”
The remark prompted a letter from nearly 700 experts urging him to “set the record straight.”
They said the drugs had been standard forms of treatment for addiction for years and that ample scientific evidence shows their effectiveness.
Schumer and his colleagues also noted that proposed cuts to Affordable Care Act programs would gut treatments available to people struggling with addiction.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.