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.”
Not interrupting the flow of opioids. That man’s “thank you” to his supporters in the rust belt. Keep them stoned until they can vote again.
I guess it’s one of those unwritten rules that every criticism directed by a GOP person at another GOP figure must contain, no matter how clumsily it has to be shoehorned in, a little squib of undeserved, unjustified criticism of the Obama administration. The very few people left in the GOP who try to say and do actually sane things occasionally all do this. Just a little homeopathic dose of Obama hatred to show your heart is still in the right place. Idiots.
Supporters in the pharmaceutical industry no doubt.
I assume you’ve heard of an ACTUAL study done correlating the high numbers of Rump voters with heroin/meth addicts in certain areas. At first, I thought it was some kind of joke. Nope.
In addition to this, what exactly does Portman think he can do in retaliation to Rump transferring these funds to tax cuts to the 1%? The voters who made Rump viable in OH will probably be with him even if he cuts of addiction treatment for them. What’s Portman’s leverage?
You don’t need a large budget if you go back to the proven tactics from the golden years of Reagan.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61N5M9ybbPL.UX385.jpg
A cost effective system with a track record, just like Trickle Down™.