The White House’s new strategy to address the nation’s drug crisis calls for a number of agreed-upon public health measures, including the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, medication-assisted treatment, and test strips used to detect fentanyl and other drug supply contaminants.
However, the May 4 document appears to contradict many of the Trump administration’s latest drug policy actions. Notably, the move comes just days after the government imposed new restrictions on using federal funds to distribute test strips and warned against using drug treatments unless accompanied by other services, such as counseling.
The document, published annually by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is the first to be made public since the Senate confirmed former Fox News correspondent Sarah Carter to the position in January.
True to Carter’s roots in reporting on cartel smuggling operations and broader Republican politics, the dossier highlights hard-line actions such as building a wall along the Mexican border, deporting drug traffickers and targeting drug ships in the Caribbean, which experts say are illegal.
Notably, the strategy does not mention syringe exchange, which is considered an important tool to prevent infections caused by injection drug use and provide low-barrier access to health care.
Trump administration warns against using federal funds for fentanyl test strips
Consistent with the government’s previous crackdown on supervised consumption and test strips, the strategy does not use the term “harm reduction,” a strategy that helps reduce deaths and illnesses among drug users without requiring abstinence.
According to the strategy document, the administration has directed resources toward “programs focused on transitional housing and treatment (and) eliminating environments that allow open drug use in cities.”
So far, perhaps the most important drug policy of the Trump administration has been to shrink the Office of Substance Use and Mental Health Services, for which the White House has never appointed a full-time leader.
It also canceled billions of dollars in funding issued through government agencies, then temporarily canceled them, but quickly reinstated about $2 billion more.
The administration’s Great American Recovery Initiative, backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s wife Kathryn Burgum, has yet to provide any significant funding or policy recommendations.
“ASAM appreciates the National Drug Control Strategy’s laudable goal of increasing access to evidence-based treatment for people with substance use disorders,” American Society of Addiction Medicine President Stephen Taylor said in a statement after participating in a rollout event for the strategy on Wednesday. “This strategy rightly emphasizes addiction as a chronic disease for which there are evidence-based treatments, including medications and psychosocial treatments, that save lives and support recovery.”
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