Long-Term, plans to cover a wide variety of projects: creating a more potent overdose-reversing medicine, studying what helps people stay sober, even developing a vaccine against opioid addiction
After Collins spoke, Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to President Donald Trump and the lead White House figure working on opioid addiction, took the stage. Perhaps because the White House had announced its latest opioid plan less than two weeks ago, there didn’t seem to be much that was new for Conway to share. Instead, she reviewed what the administration has already done, mentioning Trump’s call for the country to cut its painkiller prescriptions by one- third (which he issued in March); a government website where people affected by addiction can share their stories (which launched in November); and Trump’s declaration of a public- health emergency around opioids (which he issued in October).
Much of the conference audience—which is comprised of people who work in addiction recovery, public- health researchers, and law enforcement—gave Conway a standing ovation when she finished. And many of them filed out before the next speaker, a representative from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, came onstage. The office was established in 1988, to fight the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, and is responsible for coordinating the nation’s drug- control activity. In February, Politico reported that Conway’s work on addiction had excluded experts from the office and confused lawmakers about who to talk to about drug problems. In this case, Conway’s speech seemed to have removed much of the audience’s appetite for the ONDCP speech, which, after all, didn’t announce anything new either.
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