The Trump administration struggles to confront the deadliest drug crisis in U.S. history
Note: Death rates are a per-year average, per 100,000 people from 2013-2017 • Source: Washington Post analysis of CDC data
In Ohio, deaths from fentanyl have ravaged vast sections of the state. In 2015, there were 1,255 synthetic-opioid-related deaths, most from fentanyl. By the end of 2017, that number had nearly tripled to 3,572. On March 29, 2017, two months after his inauguration, Trump invited then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to the White House.
Fayette County Sheriff Vernon P. Stanforth opens the door to the women’s facility in April at the county jail, where inmates often go through withdrawal from drugs such as fentanyl. The county has the seventh-highest number of fentanyl-related overdose deaths per capita in the nation, according to CDC data.
Trump signed an executive order establishing the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.Between May and August 2017, an additionalMatthew Sutton, 39, a barber from Pasadena, Md., was one of them.At the Justice Department, Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, launched his own assault on fentanyl.
On May 12 that year, in one of his first actions, Sessions reversed what had become known as the “Holder Memo.” The 2013 document written by then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. directed federal prosecutors to stop pursuing low-level, nonviolent drug charges that would trigger mandatory minimum prison sentences. Over decades, U.S.
That fall, the department brought its first criminal charges against Chinese nationals accused of selling fentanyl to Americans over the Internet in cases that were filed in federal courts in North Dakota and Mississippi. Sessions said he has long believed in prevention and treatment programs, but as the attorney general, he was responsible for focusing on drug trafficking cases.
White House officials treated the drug czar’s office as a backwater. They staffed it with political operatives who had little or no drug policy experience and installed aas the deputy chief of staff. Senior staffers with years of experience were sidelined. In May 2017, the administration proposed cutting the office’s budget by 95 percent.
“Likewise, we need a strategy,” Connolly said. “Any idea when a strategy will be submitted to the Congress?”The opioid overdose death rate, by then almost entirely fueled by illicit fentanyl, continued to climb. In 2017, fentanyl for the first time became the leading cause of overdose deaths in America.
A week later, Trump mentioned fentanyl publicly for the first time as president; he had been in office for nine months. Trump also took Christie’s advice by declaring the opioid crisis to be a public health emergency —in May 2016, when health policy experts asked for the declaration for fentanyl. Some health policy experts said the report, while not groundbreaking, did provide a blueprint for the Trump administration to follow.
“We just never got the president to really give it the firepower and to elevate it,” Kennedy said in an interview. The White House drug czar’s office was still leaderless when Christie’s commission issued its report in November 2017. A few weeks later, Trump named Conway, a former Republican Party pollster, to be his point person on the opioid epidemic. A highly skilled political operative with no drug policy experience, Conway was now in charge of coordinating the government’s response to the epidemic.
“Counties and states with the highest opioid use were often areas carried by the Republican candidate,” the researchers found. “In many areas with high rates of drug overdose, voter turnout in 2016 exceeded that in 2012, with Donald Trump overwhelmingly favored.” Sheriff Richard K. Jones of Butler County, Ohio, says too much money is being spent on drug treatment programs and not enough on drug prevention and education. “Any politician who says we’re winning this battle with drugs is telling you a lie,” he says.
Leana Wen, the health commissioner in Baltimore at the time, had to choose who could receive the lifesaving medicine. Several nights a week, Christine Birhanzl drives the streets of Hamilton, a former paper and steel mill town in southwestern Ohio, handing out blankets, food and clothes to addicts. Birhanzl finally succeeded in getting Proffit help, but only because he was arrested and faced the prospect of six months in jail. He remembered meeting Birhanzl on the street and how she tried to convince him to seek treatment. He asked the judge whether he could get into her program.
In March, the Justice Department sided with 20 Republican-led states seeking to invalidate the entire act as unconstitutional. Trump then said Senate GOP leaders were writing legislation to repeal and replace the ACA. But Republicans quickly signaled that they had little appetite for raising an explosive issue just as the 2020 political season was getting underway.He works on an application for the next phase of the drug treatment program.
In Ohio, fentanyl is ravaging parts of the state and “overwhelming the system,” Sen. Rob Portman said in an interview. “It’s very stressful for my deputies. They’re seeing more death than they’ve ever seen,” said Deborah K. Burchett, the sheriff of Clark County, which had the sixth-highest fentanyl overdose death rate in the nation. “Our biggest problem is, our drug addicts also have mental health problems, and all the hospitals have been closed. They all wind up in the jail.
“I am fiscally conservative, but I also believe that it’s going to require more of a financial investment, spent wisely, to get our arms around this,” he said. “We’ve got to move quickly.” For Rep. Elijah E. Cummings , the fentanyl epidemic has hit home; he has represented Baltimore both in the state capital and in Washington for the past 36 years. He has introduced legislation that calls for spending $100 billion to combat the opioid epidemic.
“I’m just trying to help people on the streets,” Diggs said. “They trust me because I lived the life. I know what they’re going through.”
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