Vowing again to tackle opioid crisis, Trump faults his predecessor

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump promised again Tuesday to tackle the growing epidemic of opioid abuse in the United States after blaming his predecessor for not doing more to stem the surge of drug overdoses. But he offered no specific ideas for how he would do so.

Meeting with top advisers during his working vacation in New Jersey, Trump cited statistics saying that deaths stemming from opioid overdoses had skyrocketed in recent years and had become the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. He spoke generally about better health care and law enforcement action as well as guarding the southern border.

“It’s a tremendous problem in our country, and I hope we get it taken care of as well as it can be taken care of — hopefully better than any other country that also has these same problems,” he told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “Nobody is safe from this epidemic that threatens all — young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural communities. Everybody is threatened.”

He pointed to the administration of President Barack Obama. “At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer federal prosecutions than in 2011, so they looked at this surge and they let it go by,” he said. “We’re not letting it go by. The average sentence for a drug offender decreased 20 percent from 2009 to 2016. During my campaign, I promised to fight this battle because, as president of the United States, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people and to ensure their safety, especially in some parts of our country. It is horrible.”

Trump did not use the occasion to declare a national opioid emergency, as his presidential commission on the epidemic recommended. The bipartisan panel, led by Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., concluded that about 142 Americans died every day from opioid use. The panel also called the emergency declaration its “first and most urgent recommendation,” one that could force more attention on the problem from Congress and from the public.

White House officials said the president and his team were still reviewing the commission’s interim report.