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seeks to fight opioid budget TRUMP addiction "address violent crime, gun-related deaths, and the opioid epidemic."
Opioid addiction is an epidemic ravaging many of the rural areas where Trump is most popular. He's made several pledges to bring relief to those communities hit hardest by the problem. A December study found that "voting patterns show that areas where Donald Trump did well were also places where opiate overdoses and deaths occurred." One historian discovered "Nearly every Ohio county with an overdose death rate above 20 per 100,000 saw voting gains of 10% or more for Trump compared with Romney and/or drops of 10% or more for Hillary Clinton compared to President Barack Obama in 2012." In this tragic context, Trump's budget appears to be making an effort to prioritize the urgent concerns of his supporters.
Embedded in the Trump administration's Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again — amid a series of steep cuts to "non-Defense" programs — are two proposals for increased funding to fight the opioid epidemic. The first increase falls under the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency facing a proposed 17.9 percent funding decrease, one of the sharpest overall. Despite cuts to "duplicative" or "limited impact" programs
in HHS, the blueprint specifically allocates a half a billion dollar funding increase to expand opioid misuse prevention efforts and increase access to treatment and recovery services. "The opioid epidemic, which took more than 33,000 lives in calendar year 2015," the budget notes, "has a devastating effect on America's families and communities." The HHS increase aims to "help Americans who are misusing opioids get the help they need."
A second opioid-related budget increase falls under the Department of Justice. The blueprint provides an increase of $175 million to "target" criminal organizations and drug traffickers in a broader effort to "address violent crime, gun-related deaths, and the opioid epidemic."
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