Trump’s 49 seconds on the opioid epidemic: 5 questions from the front lines (STAT)

Thursday Feb 1st, 2018

President Trump’s State of the Union address was 80 minutes long. He spent just 49 seconds on the opioid epidemic, something he has declared to be a public health emergency.

The brevity of his remarks on opioids is indicative of the lack of action taken by the federal government in the three months since the emergency declaration. For us on the front lines of the epidemic in Baltimore, as elsewhere around the country, the declaration has had no impact at all. The federal government continues to delay committing new funding to treating addiction as the disease that it is, while hundreds of people die every day from overdoses.

Read Dr. Wen's entire op-ed.

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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