Following a reports that the White House is looking to drastically cut funding for the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the 2018 budget, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) on Friday warned that such cuts would hurt the country’s ability to fight the opioid crisis.
“I’ve known and worked with our drug czars for more than 20 years and this agency is critical to our efforts to combat drug abuse in general, and this opioid epidemic, in particular. This office supports the Drug Free Communities Act, legislation I authored in 1997 which has provided more than $1 billion to community drug coalitions around the country over the last 20 years, as well as the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which has helped states like Ohio that are ground zero for this problem,” Portman said in a statement.
“We have a heroin and prescription drug crisis in this country and we should be supporting efforts to reverse this tide, not proposing drastic cuts to those who serve on the front lines of this epidemic,” he concluded.
Both Politico and the New York Times on Friday reported that the Trump administration is looking into a 95 percent cut in funding for the office.
Asked about the reports Friday afternoon, Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that she would not “comment on ongoing discussions.”
“Again, there’s not a final document,” she added. “When there is, we’d certainly be happy to discuss that. I think the bigger point here is the President has made very clear that the opioid epidemic in this country is a huge priority for him, something he is certainly very focused on tackling and something that I think was ignored by the previous administration that won’t go ignored in this one.”
