President Trump will proclaim the opioid epidemic a public health emergency this afternoon, stopping short of declaring it a full-scale national emergency as he’d previously promised.
He’ll sign a memorandum opening up additional resources for recovering addicts and deliver an address on the crisis from the White House’s East Room on the affliction that snuffed out 64,000 lives in America last year.
‘The opioid is a tremendous emergency, what’s going on there,’ Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs.
The announcement will not come with new funding to combat the drug epidemic, although the administration hopes that Congress will appropriate the funds later this year.
President Trump will proclaim the opioid epidemic a public health emergency this afternoon, stopping short of declaring it a full-scale national emergency as he’d previously promised
Just yesterday, the president told reporters that he intended to have a ‘big meeting’ on opioids on Thursday and he’d be ‘doing a very, very important meeting sometime in the very short — the very near future on opioids, in terms of declaring a national emergency, which gives us power to do things that you can’t do right now.’
A fact sheet provided to reporters on Thursday morning defined it as a ‘Nationwide Public Health Emergency,’ instead.
The alteration first appeared in USA Today.
As the newspaper noted, public health emergencies and presidential emergencies are legally not the same. For Trump to declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency, he’d have to make use of the Stafford Act or the National Emergencies Act, and he doesn’t.
The distinction is an important one. Trump’s administration would have even more power to waive federal rules and marshal government resources if he formally designated the epidemic a national emergency like he’s repeatedly said he would.
Trump will instead direct the Department of Labor to issue dislocated worker grants to people who have been affected by the opioid crisis. And he’ll give the Department of Health and Human Services permission to cut through red tape to immediately hire opioid abuse specialists.
The president will also make substance abuse treatment help available to people with HIV/AIDS, acknowledging the link between drug use and transmission, the White House says.
President Trump labeled the epidemic a ‘national emergency’ on August 10 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey – a recommendation of his opioid commission but not his HHS secretary.
The administration has spent the time since then putting together a national action plan.
President Donald Trump listens before a meeting with administration officials and First Lady Melania Trump (R) on the opioid addiction crisis at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on August 8, 2017
First lady Melania Trump has added the issue to her portfolio, visiting a West Virginia drug a treatment center two weeks ago in support of parents working to overcome addiction.
Opioid addiction was also the topic of Mrs. Trump’s first solo policy event since becoming first lady.
She held a roundtable at the White House on the national crisis at the end of September.
‘The well-being of children is of the utmost importance to me and I plan to use my platform as first lady to help as many kids as I can,’ she said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a quarter of drug overdose deaths were caused by heroin in 2015, a 19 percent jump since 1999, CNN has reported.
Axios said Monday that the administration has plans to roll out a ‘massive advertising and public-relations campaign’ to combat the disease. It will be requesting funds from Congress for the effort.
A White House official previewing the announcement on a Thursday morning call said the president would like Congress to address it in the end-of-year budget deal but a formal request has not been presented.
The Trump administration acknowledged on Thursday that an ‘ongoing discussion’ would need to take place about an appropriation to the public health emergency account.
Still, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, head of Trump’s opioid abuse commission, told USA Today that Trump’s action today ‘sends a clear signal from the president that he wants money appropriated into that fund.’
‘And it gives Congress a place to go with that money to give the administration some flexibility to use it to be able to use it to deal with some of the most pressing parts of it,’ he said.
Christie claimed Thursday that Trump was declaring the crisis a national emergency for all intents and purposes.
He highlighted a section of the Commission on Combatting Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis’ interim report that urged Trump to declare the drug crisis a ‘national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act.’
‘By using the Public Health Service Act, as we recommended, the President is showing an unprecedented commitment to fighting this epidemic and placing the weight of the Presidency behind saving lives across the country,’ Christie said.
Christie said the commission will be presenting a full report to Trump next week on Wednesday.
‘We look forward to the President’s remarks today and to the continued implementation of our comprehensive plan through this declaration in the weeks and months ahead,’ Christie said.
A Washington Post report in August said that a national emergency designation would have provided states in opioid hot spots with the opportunity to request and receive federal funds they can put toward to opioid abuse drug treatment efforts.
‘First, it lets states and localities that are designated disaster zones to access money in the federal Disaster Relief Fund, just like they could if they had a tornado or hurricane,’ Stanford University drug addition specialist Keith Humphreys said then.
Humphreys said Trump could also issue temporary rule changes to allow the expansion of federal treatment programs and reimbursements through the use of waivers.
A White House official told reporters Thursday that the administration opted not to go that route because those rules were intended for natural disasters. The Public Health Service Act is a better vehicle for this particular crisis, the official contended.
First Lady Melania Trump has added the issue to her portfolio, visiting a West Virginia drug a treatment center two weeks ago in support of parents working to overcome addiction
Former HHS secretary Tom Price said after the president’s August briefing that he did not think the opioid abuse constituted a national emergency, only to have the boss contradict him two days later.
‘The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now it is an emergency,’ Trump said.
Trump took a slap at his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, for allowing the crisis to balloon on his watch.
‘At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer federal prosecutions than in 2011. So they looked at this surge and they let it go by.
‘We’re not letting it go by. The average sentence for a drug offender decreased 20 percent from 2009 to 2016,’ the Republican president said.
He assessed that ‘the best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don’t start, they won’t have a problem. If they do start, it’s awfully tough to get off.’
Trump came under scrutiny earlier this year for referring to New Hampshire, a state that he won, as ‘a drug-infested den.’ He blamed the problem on Mexico in a call that was leaked to that country’s president.