In New Hampshire today, President Trump announced his plan for tackling the opioid crisis. The main points from the plan, as reported by Axios, are:
- Work with coastal services and shipment services to set up screening technologies to detect illicit substances that are being shipped into the country.
- Support research and development efforts for technologies and additional therapies designed to prevent addiction and decrease the use of opioids in pain management.
- Reduce demand and the overprescription of opioids.
- Allocate funds for initiatives related to opioids to help states transition to a nationally interoperable Prescription Drug Monitoring Program network.
- Increase support for state and local drug courts to provide offenders with access to treatment "as an alternative to or in conjunction with incarceration, or as a condition of supervised release."
- Urge Congress to pass legislation that tightens sentencing penalties for drug dealers trafficking certain illicit opioids.
- Impose appropriate criminal and civil actions to hold opioid manufacturers accountable for any unlawful actions, and also screen federal inmates with opioid addiction and connect them to treatment services.
In short, it appears the Trump Administration's main objective is to ramp up law enforcement, spend taxpayer money on "research", and aim to "reduce demand," likely by increasing restrictions on physicians - which often pushes patients into more dangerous illicit drugs.
Sadly nothing here touches on the largest driver of the opioid crisis which, as Mark Thornton has explained, is a pain epidemic going on in America. Unsurprisingly, given the rhetoric from the administration, the idea of removing Federal restrictions on marijuana - something that appears to help actually address opioid usage - was not suggested.
Of course another much talked about part of the president's proposal is to introduce the death penalty for large scale dealers. This invites the question: should this mean the end of the CIA?
After all, selling drugs and torturing people are the only things it appears to be good at.
