TRUMP: LET'S END OPIOID ' SCOURGE'
Dayton family attends White House ceremony.
President Donald Trump on Thursday pledged to fight the nation’s opioid epidemic with the full force of his administration, vowing to do everything from cracking down on fentanyl shipped from China to launching a sweeping advertising campaign educating young people about the dangers of drugs.
In a White House ceremony attended by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a pair of Republican congressmen from Ohio — Reps. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, and Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green — and a Dayton family that cares for two foster children whose parents are addicted,
Trump used deeply personal language to urge every American to fight the drug epidemic that claims an average of 175 Americans a day.
“Nobody has seen anything like what’s going on now,” Trump said. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue. It is time to liberate our society from this scourge. We can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.”
Portman called Trump’s decision to declare the crisis a public health emergency “a positive step forward.” But he called for the Senate to pass a handful of bills he is pushing to address the crisis. Among them: a bill pushed by him and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that would provide for better screening of the U.S. mail to help prevent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl from being shipped from overseas.
Trump, too, addressed that issue in his remarks, saying he planned to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping about it during an upcoming visit to China.
Trump also said he would lift a Medicaid requirement that treatment centers hold no more than 16 beds. Portman and Brown have also pushed legislation to lift that cap. And Trump addressed the need to treat babies born to addicts — an issue close to Rep. Mike Turner’s heart. Turner, a sponsor of a bill that would help newborns born addicted to drugs, praised Trump’s announcement.
“This year in Montgomery County alone, 800 deaths are expected of drug overdoses,” Turner, R-Dayton, said. “This is unacceptable. If 800 deaths were expected of Zika, you’d see public outrage, but because this is an addiction issue it hasn’t gotten the attention it’s been due.”
Trump said addiction has touched his family, and spoke about his brother Fred’s alcohol problems.
“My brother Fred was a great guy,” he said. “He was the best-looking guy; he had the best personality — much better than mine. But he had a problem. He had a problem with alcohol.”
Fred Trump died at age 43 in 1981.
President Trump said he became a lifelong teetotaler because of his brother’s warnings not to drink.
He vowed a “massive advertising campaign” aimed at urging kids not to take drugs in the first place. “They will see the devastation and ruination it causes to people and people’s lives,” he said, and promised that the campaign would bring down overdoses and addictions. “It will be a beautiful thing to see,” he said.
Jon Keeling, a spokesman for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, praised the announcement. “We fully recognize the challenge facing Ohio, and we welcome any additional resources provided by the federal government to better arm those on the frontlines combating addiction in our communities,” he said.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine also praised the decision, saying “the action items the president announced today will help on many fronts, including prevention, education, treatment and law enforcement.”
Public health emergencies — which have been named for the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, the Zika outbreak in 2016 and, more recently, hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico — allow the secretary of health and human services additional flexibility, such as accessing money from the Public Health Emergency Fund, waiving some Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance privacy and Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements, appoint personnel to respond the emergency and give states flexibility in how they use federal dollars.
A public health emergency typically lasts 90 days, but can be extended.
Trump did not declare a national state of emergency, which would have allowed states to access funding from the federal Disaster Relief Fund — an account typically used to pay for the response to tornadoes and hurricanes. In a briefing with reporters early Thursday, Trump administration officials said that such a designation would not have been appropriate for the crisis, which has already spanned years. Such disasters — usually managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency — are short-term and geographically specific.
While that type of emergency “doesn’t really offer authorities that are essentially helpful here,” the official said, “if our legal analysis uncovers an authority really needed that could be helpful that we don’t already have, we would consider additional declarations.”
The designation of the opioid epidemic as a public health emergency comes two months after Trump’s Aug. 10 announcement that the crisis was a “national emergency” “the likes of which we’ve never had.” The delay, administration officials said, was because it needed to do a legal review.
Brown, speaking on CNN Thursday, said, “My first thought was, ‘what took the president so long?’” But he said he is hopeful the designation as a public health emergency will “marshal the forces of the federal government to do the right thing.”
“This is a plus today, and I applaud him doing it,” Brown said.