Trump Is Continuing the War on Drugs That Kept Me Addicted [View all]

I’m a former heroin addict. I know all too well where Trump’s opioid plan goes wrong.
By ELIZABETH BRICO November 28, 2017

All eyes were on President Donald Trump last month while he formally declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. But how many people noticed the woman to his left? Dressed in neutral tones, firmly in frame throughout the speech, stood Sara Dean Collier, a woman in recovery from opioid addiction whom first lady Melania Trump cited during her introduction. Collier was the single source mentioned from the recovery community, the token addict—and she looked as uncomfortable standing there as that designation sounds.

I understand why she was invited. A tidy white woman, 10 years in recovery, positioned neatly behind the president's shoulder gives the impression that the White House is listening to the people most affected by the crisis—people like Collier and myself who know firsthand the struggle of addiction. But is the White House listening? I’m asking because the “just say no” rhetoric and emphasis on arresting and imprisoning drug dealers is exactly the opposite of what those of us in recovery—or those still engaged in an active addiction—most need to hear. It’s the opposite of what we should be doing to stem the epidemic of opioid addiction.

It was at that October 26 announcement that Trump outlined his response to the opioid drug epidemic sweeping the country—a plan that’s inadequate at best, and more likely counterproductive. Let’s start with the funding: At that address, Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, opening up a mere $57,000 in funds to cover everything from telemedicine to naloxone distribution expansions—partial solutions for a crisis the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates carries a $78.5 billion price tag. If Trump had declared it a national disaster, which several on his staff were pushing for, he would have unlocked up to billions of dollars in Federal Emergency Management Agency relief funds. That massive funding shortfall, paired with Medicaid cuts the White House supports, means the addiction community will be less able to access the care it needs, from medication-assisted therapy to substance abuse counseling

These funding shortfalls, though, are nothing compared with moves his administration has taken to return to the ruthless criminalization of drugs that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s. Trump’s emphasis at that October speech on a Nancy Reagan-style ad campaign—ads likely to cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars—is enough to bring back memories of the golden age of the war on drugs. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has asked prosecutors to pursue the “most serious, readily provable offense,” ending an Obama-era reform that aimed to charge nonviolent drug offenders with less serious crimes.


More: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/28/donald-trump-opioids-drug-war-215872