U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Urges Trump Administration to Support Additional Funding to Combat Opioid Epidemic
The President’s emergency declaration only makes about $57,000 available which fails to adequately address this epidemic.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin today sent a letter to President Donald Trump with Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Angus King (I-ME) and a group of 19 senators, calling on the President to support additional funding necessary to combat the opioid epidemic. Currently, the President’s emergency declaration only makes about $57,000 available which fails to adequately address this epidemic.
“We appreciate your formal declaration that the opioid epidemic is a National Public Health Emergency. While this is a positive step forward, more action must be taken in order to craft a timely and effective national strategy that will achieve long term solutions to this crisis. Specifically, we are concerned that your declaration does not yet include any additional funding resources for key programs and initiatives that will help our patients, providers, first responders and researchers who desperately need more assistance,” wrote the senators.
The senators continued, “Researchers, providers, patients, first responders, experts and policy makers agree that investing sufficient and timely resources are of paramount importance in order to allow our communities to effectively combat this epidemic. The President’s Commission on Combatting Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis agrees. The final Commission report released this week recommends that your Administration increase access to treatment and recovery programs, as well as expand the capacity for medication-assisted treatment and first responder access to overdose reversal drugs. As such, we encourage your Administration to work closely with Congress to swiftly provide the necessary additional and sustained funding to carry out a multi-faceted approach that supports activities related to research, education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.”
In addition, Senator Baldwin joined 14 of her Senate colleagues last week to introduce the Combating the Opioid Epidemic Act, which would invest an additional $45 billion in local prevention, treatment and recovery efforts.
The letter to President Trump can be read here.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.
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