America’s drug overdose crisis is out of control. Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat it, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing.
In 2018, Republicans, Democrats and then-President Donald Trump united around legislation that threw $20 billion into treatment, prevention and recovery. But five years later, the SUPPORT Act has lapsed and the number of Americans dying from overdoses has grown more than 60 percent, driven by illicit fentanyl. The battle has turned into a slog.
Even though 105,000 Americans died last year, Congress is showing little urgency about reupping the law since it expired on Sept. 30. That’s not because of partisan division, but a realization that there are no quick fixes a new law could bring to bear.
Aiming to expand access to treatment, Congress in December eliminated the waiver and training requirements physicians needed to prescribe buprenorphine, which helps patients stop taking fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently extended eased pandemic rules for prescribing it via telemedicine through the end of 2024.
A bipartisan group of representatives focused on mental health and substance use has proposed more than 70 bills this Congress to fight the overdose crisis, but none of them has inspired the kind of urgency lawmakers showed five years ago when they packaged bills into one landmark package: the SUPPORT Act.
The law’s expiration on Oct. 1 means states are no longer required to cover all of the FDA-approved treatments for opioid use disorder through Medicaid but public health advocates don’t expect any state to drop that coverage.
Evidence? Look at the first link you sent me.
This is not government policy. This was not serious. This was a military grunt making a dumb joke that he got reprimanded for, that CTV is using for click bait and idiots like you are taking as fact.
Your media literacy is embarrassing.
Are you really complaining about media literacy when you are just making assumptions based on…nothing? Writing this off as ‘just a military grunt’ is so obviously ignorant it tells me you don’t really care about the evidence provided since you are just going to nitpick words and sentences, then make wild assumptions (like knowing exactly what was going through that persons mind that makes it a ‘joke’) and conclude that you were right.