The Biden administration announced a $450 million effort to fight overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids amid a nationwide surge that has become a 2024 campaign issue.
(Bloomberg) — The Biden administration announced a $450 million effort to fight overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids amid a nationwide surge that has become a 2024 campaign issue.
White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said in a briefing Thursday that the money would be spent on prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services, as well as cracking down on drug trafficking.
“Overdose is preventable, addiction is treatable,” she said. Tanden said the US can also disrupt fentanyl trafficking networks.
The efforts include grants to distribute naloxone — an overdose-prevention drug — to rural areas, train paramedics on treating overdoses, increase spending on an anti-fentanyl ad campaign, and expand regional drug-trafficking programs, among other things.
In 2022, more than two-thirds of the 107,081 drug overdose deaths in the US involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Republican presidential candidates have seized on the fentanyl crisis as a campaign issue, with former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledging to use the military to fight Mexican cartels involved in fentanyl trafficking.
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