Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, Sen. Elizabeth Warren plan sweeping legislation to combat opioid crisis (Baltimore Sun)
With drug overdose deaths ravaging communities across the country, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are planning to introduce legislation Wednesday that would require $10 billion a year in federal funding to combat the opioid crisis.
Cummings and Warren are proposing a program — modeled off 1990’s Ryan White Act, which provided billions in federal money to combat the AIDS crisis — to address the drug overdoses which are claiming lives in record numbers. The program would send federal help directly to local and state governments to provide treatment services.
Cummings said he and Warren got the idea to fund a massive public health campaign against opioids from Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen and her staff, who pitched the lawmakers on the need for increased funding.
“We have been calling for the same thing all along: Sustained funding,” Wen said. “It needs to be a proportional amount to the size of the epidemic. The funding needs to be given directly to the highest-need jurisdictions.”