Trump’s order not enough to prevent veteran suicide
On Jan. 9, President Donald Trump signed an executive order expanding mental-health services for veterans re-entering civilian life with the intent to combat veteran suicide.
Such services are desperately needed. Our veterans face a sweeping suicide epidemic. In 2014, an average of 20 veterans died from suicide each day, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports. Veterans are 20 percent more likely than non-veterans to commit suicide.
I was almost one of those statistics. As a combat veteran who spent 14 consecutive months in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, I have spent the last 14 years in the trenches fighting a bureaucratic system that nearly led to my suicide time and time again.
This executive order is important, but I believe Trump’s actions fall short of meeting our veterans’ needs today. What will this order do for veterans being prescribed medications that drive us closer, rather than farther away, from the edge? What will it do for veterans who have been forced out of the VA’s medical-treatment network? What will it do for the 20-plus veterans who killed themselves today? And what will it do for these veterans’ families, whose lives have been shattered?
Expanding mental-health services for transitioning veterans is only the first of many actions that must be taken.
While this executive order was a step in the right direction for veterans, the Trump administration has since taken several steps back with regards to a treatment that many veterans have come to rely on: medical cannabis.
Two days after Trump signed the order targeting veteran suicide, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole memo and other legal directives that indicated federal prosecutors would not interfere with statebased medical cannabis laws. More recently, the VA declared it would not conduct research into whether medical cannabis could help veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and other conditions.
While medical cannabis won’t solve the veteran-suicide epidemic, compassionate access to cannabis medicine is a key element in coping for many veterans. Our government is telling veterans like me who have found critical relief through medical cannabis that our lifeline is unworthy of scientific study. Now, we could be at risk of federal reprisals.
Despite Trump’s statements and executive orders, this administration is falling short on what needs to be done for millions of veterans and their families who desperately need help. That need inspired my wife, Danielle, and me to found Mission Zero, an organization dedicated to combating the veterans’ post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide epidemic. And it’s why I am one of five plaintiffs suing the federal government to remove marijuana from its list of Schedule I drugs.
I do this for the sake of all generations of veterans — past, present and future. And I look to you, Mr. President, to do the same. I ask you to help us end this devastating epidemic. Will you remember those of us who have died for you and the red, white and blue?