President Donald Trump said building a wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico and getting tougher on drug dealers — not convening more blue ribbon committees — would lead to Americans prevailing over the opioid epidemic that has plagued the nation.
"We can do all the blue ribbon committees we want," Trump said during a Feb. 5 trip to Ohio to tout the Republicans' tax cut bill, which was enacted in late December 2017. "Frankly, I have a different take on it. My take is you have to get really, really tough, really mean with the drug pushers and the drug dealers."
"We have to get a lot tougher than we are and we have to stop drugs from pouring across our border," he added.
Trump last year convened his own panel — the White House Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis — to examine the epidemic and provide advice.
The committee on Nov. 1, 2017, offered 56 recommendations — most of which Trump has thus far ignored.
Trump went against the panel's advice to declare the crisis a national emergency — a status that would have provided immediate funding from Congress — and instead opted for a less potent designation of public health emergency.
That designation, however, was only good for 90 days and had to be renewed last month. The declaration has done little to change the opioid epidemic and Trump has yet to ask Congress for any new funds to combat the crisis.
The president instead put the onus for finding money on cash-strapped federal agencies, telling them to shift their funds around.
Legislative solutions
While Trump appeared to pooh-pooh the efforts of blue ribbon panels to tackle the opioid crisis, various committees on Capitol Hill have been convening or plan to soon meet on what can be done to curb the epidemic.
At a Feb. 6 hearing, members of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee are expected to hear about the roles data, addiction prevention and access to treatment play in addressing the crisis in the Medicare population. Lawmakers plan to discuss possible legislative solutions to combat opioid abuse.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also plans to meet on Feb. 8 to hear from various stakeholders. The same panel convened in October 2017, when it heard from the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.
Meanwhile Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called on the committee's chairman to convene a separate hearing to ask pharmaceutical industry executives about what their companies knew about the addictive nature of opioids "while they were flooding towns across the U.S. with far more pills than they could ever need."
Sanders said he plans to introduce legislation aimed at holding opioid makers and distributors accountable "for the destruction they have caused."
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations met on Jan. 25 to hear how criminals are exploiting loopholes in the international mail and delivery services systems to ship their illegal products to online buyers in the U.S.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee also held a hearing in October 2017 on the opioid epidemic and plans to initiate a new round of hearings later this month on the matter.
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 5 requested feedback from various stakeholders on what Medicare and Medicaid payment incentives could be used to promote evidence-based care for beneficiaries with chronic pain that minimizes the risk of developing opioid addiction and other substance use disorders, and if there are barriers preventing the use of non-pharmaceutical therapies.
Border wall
While in Ohio, Trump insisted the solution to the opioid crisis was to "get tough" and "get angry" about the drug dealers and gang members "pouring into our country" and to build the border wall to stop them — a measure that was at the center of his presidential campaign.
Last month, Trump proposed a path to citizenship for 1.8 million immigrants who were illegally brought into the U.S. as children by their parents — people who are currently protected under the soon-to-expire Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — in exchange for $25 million to build the border wall, along with other measures.
"We're building the wall or a lot of other things won't happen," Trump declared during his Feb. 5 speech at Sheffer Corp., a cylinder manufacturer located in Blue Ash, Ohio, not far from Cincinnati.
He did not, however, mention efforts underway by the FDA aimed at reining in inappropriate prescribing of opioids or any other measures the agency has planned to pursue, like enabling more product innovation for improved medication-assisted therapies to treat addiction.
Trump has also been mum on seeking funds to get a public-private partnership off the ground aimed at accelerating the development of nonaddictive alternatives to opioids and better overdose-reversal agents. The project, which is intended to be run by the NIH, has been waiting on government funds since May 2017. About three dozen companies have been meeting with the NIH and the FDA to hash out a plan of action, but drugmakers have been unwilling to commit until the government funds are secured.
While in Ohio, First Lady Melania Trump, who accompanied her husband on the trip, visited the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center to talk with doctors about the negative effects of opioids on newborns, including neonatal abstinence syndrome.
