Trump’s opioid war will be less sweeping
He’s set to declare a public health, not national, emergency
WASHINGTON President Trump will order his health secretary to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency Thursday but will stop short of declaring a more sweeping state of national emergency, aides said.
In an address from the White House, Trump also will try to rally the nation against a grow- ing epidemic that claimed 64,000 American lives last year and will seek a sustained national effort to end it.
“Drug demand and opioid misuse is the crisis next door,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior counselor to the president, previewing the tone of Trump’s speech Wednesday. “This is no longer someone else’s co-worker, someone else’s community, someone else’s kid. Drug use knows no geographic boundaries or demographic differences.”
Trump will sign a presidential memorandum ordering Eric Hargan, acting secretary of the Department of Health
and Human Services, to waive regulations and give states more flexibility in how they use federal money, said four senior officials responsible for crafting the administration’s new opioid policy. The officials previewed the action to USA TODAY on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak ahead of the president’s announcement.
Trump first promised to declare a national emergency to combat opioid abuse on Aug. 10, and he repeated that pledge last week. Speaking to reporters Wednesday on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump touted a “big meeting ” on opioids and said a national emergency “gives us power to do things that you can’t do right now.”
But there’s a legal distinction between a public health emergency, which the health secretary can declare under the Public Health Services Act, and a presidential emergency under the National Emergencies Act.
The latter is what the president’s own opioid commission recommended in July. Declaring a state of national emergency would give the president even more power to waive privacy laws and Medicare regulations to increase the number of beds available to treat substance abuse.
Administration officials said the broader national emergency declaration was unnecessary because the government can clear some hurdles through lower-level action.
HHS expects to issue guidance soon emphasizing that health care providers can communicate with the families of overdose victims without running afoul of health privacy laws. HHS also has approved waivers to some Medicare regulations in four states, giving them the flexibility that a national emergency could have provided.
Trump’s decision to go with a more measured response, a public health emergency, demonstrates the complexity of an epidemic that continues to grow through an ever-evolving cycle of addiction, from prescription pain pills to heroin to the lethal fentanyl.
But the legal powers Trump is invoking were designed for a short-term emergencies like disasters and infectious diseases.
By law, a public health emergency can last only for 90 days but can be renewed any number of times. There are 13 localized public health emergencies already in effect for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate, plus the California wildfires.
But the opioid action would be the first public health emergency with a nationwide scope since a year-long emergency to prepare for the H1N1 influenza virus in 2009 and 2010.
On Thursday, the officials said, Trump will sign a presidential memorandum directing Hargan to declare a public health emergency. That designation would give the administration specific powers to marshal federal, state and private resources. Those powers would:
Allow patients to get medically assisted treatment for opioid addiction through telemedicine. Current law generally requires in-person visits for doctors to prescribe controlled substances. But for people in rural areas like Appalachia — where the epidemic has taken a particularly heavy toll — qualified doc- tors can often be hours away.
Give states the ability to shift federal grant money from a wide range of public health issues: HIV, diabetes, maternal care — temporarily to opioid treatment programs.
Make Dislocated Worker Grants available to opioid addicts through the Department of Labor. Those grants are usually available to people put out of work by a natural disaster, but a public health emergency also could make those grants available to people in treatment. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta told the opioid commission last week that pain and addiction sideline millions of American workers: Of men ages 25 to 54 not in workforce, 44% had taken a painkiller in the past day, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.
Tap the Public Health Emergency Fund, a special fund that gives HHS maximum flexibility in a health crisis.
That fund, however, has just $57,000 in it, said Bill Hall, an HHS deputy assistant secretary. The city of Middletown, Ohio, could spend almost twice that this year on naloxone alone. Naloxone is a drug that can instantly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who chairs the president’s opioid commission, told USA TODAY that a public health emergency should put pressure on Congress to act.
“My view is that this action sends a clear signal from the president that he wants money appropriated into that fund,” he said. “And it gives Congress a place to go with that money.”
Christie’s top priority: Getting naloxone into the hands of every first responder in the country: “That will bend the curve back in terms of lost lives.”