Is the Opioid Crisis a National Emergency?

No (At least not officially.)

By JOSH KATZ AUG. 24, 2017

Two weeks ago, in response to a reporter’s question, President Trump proclaimed that he considered the opioid crisis to be “a national emergency,” leading many news organizations to report that a national emergency had been declared. But the Trump administration, perhaps caught off guard by the president’s statement, has not yet taken the legal steps to give those words force.

A national emergency, and the extra powers that come with it, requires a formal declaration, which the Trump administration has not made. According to a White House spokesman, any such emergency actions are going through “an expedited legal review,” but it is unclear how long this review will take. This kind of delay between pronouncement and formal declaration is not normal. In the past, formal declarations and public pronouncements of a public emergency generally have happened simultaneously.

There are already 28 active national emergencies, involving:

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You might have noticed that none of these seem clearly directed at U.S. public health. And you’d be right. National emergencies like these, each of which must be renewed by the president annually, are typically used to freeze the assets of foreign nationals or impose sanctions on another country. In some cases, such as the responses to the Sept. 11 attacks and the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, the “emergencies” last for decades, as they are still used to justify current policy.

While national emergencies can be declared to address public health crises — as with President Obama’s announcement to combat the swine flu epidemic in 2009 — the most direct way to do so is through the declaration of a public health emergency. (There is another category of emergencies under the Stafford Act — more on these later.)

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