Vox: The opioid epidemic is a crisis, but Trump isn’t treating it like one
Trump hasn’t delivered on his promise to seriously confront the opioid epidemic.
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The US has been notoriously slow to respond to a health crisis before. With HIV/AIDS, the slow response to the crisis led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. But Congress did eventually enact the Ryan White CARE Act, which effectively guaranteed treatment to those with HIV/AIDS, and other programs — dedicating tens of billions of dollars over years to a huge public health problem.
The opioid crisis is now killing far more people each year in the US than HIV/AIDS ever did. Yet Trump has mostly acted on the margins.
Experts have described the legislation he has signed to tackle the epidemic as “simply tinkering around the edges” and insufficient in terms of funds. After Trump declared an emergency over the opioid crisis, a government watchdog agency found the declaration didn’t lead to much actual policy change.
Instead, Trump has spent much of his time focusing on building a wall at the US-Mexico border, in part to stop the flow of illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl. But experts have long said that a wall wouldn’t do much, if anything, to stop drugs from pouring into the US.
The opioid epidemic, despite Trump’s talk, has not been a priority for him. On the White House’s website, there are five categories to navigate through: the economy, national security, budget, immigration, and opioid crisis. In a telling symbol of the issue’s place on Trump’s agenda, only the opioid crisis section hasn’t received an update in almost a year.
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