Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), author of the comprehensive addiction and recovery law that passed last year, released the following statement on the Trump Administration’s dramatic proposed funding cuts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the lead federal agency charged with fighting the opioid drug crisis:
“This President campaigned in state after state on promises to tackle the opioid crisis. Then he proposed massive cuts to public health funding and pushed a repeal of Obamacare that would strip millions of substance abuse coverage. Now he’s going after the national drug policy office. In Congress, we passed the bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to forge a unified front in this fight, and it’s sad to see this President walk away.”
In July, President Obama signed into law Whitehouse’s Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which established a range of policies to prevent and treat addiction to opioid drugs, including programs to increase education on drug use, to expand medication-assisted treatment, to improve prescription drug monitoring programs, to support those in recovery, and to promote comprehensive state responses to the opioid crisis.
In Rhode Island in 2015, 258 people lost their lives to overdoses – more than the number of those killed in homicides, suicides, and car accidents combined.
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