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Nearly $2B in taxpayer funds headed to US communities to combat opioid epidemic

The federal government is sending nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to U.S. states and communities to combat the opioid crisis — an epidemic that is largely being fueled by the powerful synthetic drug fentanyl.

The funds include $900 million allotted by Congress to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will award the money to states, territories, counties, cities and local health departments over three years as part of a project to gather and track data about drug overdoses.

SNL ImageHHS Secretary Alex Azar
Source: The Associated Press

The CDC will provide $301 million of the funding in 2019, with the remainder being allocated over the following two years.

The 2019 CDC awards to the various state and local entities ranged from just over $1 million to the Northern Mariana Islands to nearly $8.7 million to the Ohio Department of Health, according to a chart posted online by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Grant recipients are expected to gather and rapidly report data about the substances, circumstances and locations involved in overdoses and deaths, as well as demographic information about those who have overdosed, such as age, race and gender.

The data will be used to inform prevention and response efforts, officials said.

The funding is also intended to be used to strengthen prescription drug monitoring programs, improve state-local integration, establish links to care and better support health care providers and health systems, the CDC said.

"Funded programs will yield information crucial to a better understanding of why, and among whom, overdoses and deaths are taking place," the agency said in a Sept. 4 statement.

Flexible funds

The other $932 million in taxpayer funding will be awarded to states and U.S. territories through grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to support prevention, treatment and recovery services.

The new SAMHSA funding is supporting the second year of the state opioid response program mandated by Congress under a massive legislative package adopted by the U.S. House and Senate with strong bipartisan support in 2018. The first year of the program was supported with $500 million in federal funds.

The second-year state opioid response funding ranged from $250,000 — allocated to American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and the U.S. Virgin Islands — to more than $69.8 million for California.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar noted the SAMHSA funding is intended to be flexible, allowing states to use the money in ways they see fit.

"Different states have different needs and different resources of their own," Azar told reporters during a Sept. 4 briefing. "The structure of these grants recognizes that."

But he noted there is one requirement tied to the grants: Treatment providers must make medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, available.

"I made it clear from my first day here at HHS that our work combating the opioid crisis had to follow the best science possible, and our commitment to MAT is an essential piece of that," Azar said.

While Azar said the recent provisional information showed drug overdose deaths had declined by 5% from 2017 to 2018, he acknowledged "we have more work to do."

"More Americans still need treatment, more Americans need support in entering recovery, and more needs to be done to prevent Americans from becoming addicted in the first place," he said.

SNL ImageHHS Secretary Alex Azar and President Donald Trump
Source: The Associated Press

By investing nearly $2 billion in federal funds in states and local communities, "we are once again supporting those closest to those in need," White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters. "At the community level, law enforcement, health care providers, mental health professionals and others access the monies provided by the federal government to bring much-needed relief to our brothers and sisters who are suffering the scourge of misuse disorder and addiction."

President Donald Trump said the new taxpayer funds will help ensure Americans with substance use disorder will get the help they need and allow the nation to "smash the grip of addiction."

"Nothing is more important than defeating the addiction and opioid crisis," Trump told reporters during an afternoon news conference.

Part of the funds will be used for mental health resources, "which are critical for ending homelessness," Trump said.

"So many problems are caused by this problem," he said.

Trump noted that he declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October 2017 — a status that must be renewed every 90 days. He declined, however, to deem the epidemic a national emergency, which would have made funding more immediately available.