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President Trump on Wednesday signed a major bill on opioids, a rare bill that sparked bipartisan support.
The bill addresses many aspects of the opioid crisis, including prevention, treatment and recovery. It brings together bills sponsored by hundreds of lawmakers, many of whom are involved in tough re-election battles and can now boast of their support for the law as Election Day approaches.
"Together we will overcome this epidemic – it's a real epidemic – as a people, a family and a beautiful country under God," said Trump.
Drug overdoses killed about 72,000 people last year and opioids have become a major campaign issue for Democrats and Republicans. Drugs have become central in countries like West Virginia, Ohio and Florida, which have been hard hit by the opioid crisis. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, congressional advertising and governors mentioning opioids have been broadcast more than 500,000 times in 25 states; In 2014, there was only one ad on opioids, in a race in the Senate in Kentucky.
Some Congressional Republicans have disagreed with the very popular opioid bill (393 versus 8 in the Senate and 98 versus 1 in the Senate), although Trump falsely declared at a rally in the US campaign. Ohio small democrat support. "
Candidates for the Democratic Senate, particularly those in the most opioid-ravaged states, have encouraged their efforts to stem the epidemic in a series of positive campaign announcements.
An announcement from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) features a nurse who talks about the high rate of infants born with opioid addiction and says, "They need a champion more than anyone else. It's Sherrod Brown. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) Released an announcement earlier this year with a similar message, featuring a mother from Wisconsin whose daughter died of an overdose three years ago.
Senator Joe Manchin III (D), in West Virginia, where the rate of drug overdose is the highest, hammered his opponent, Republican Patrick Morrisey, for having always lobbied for the sector pharmaceutical industry, although the latter has declared on behalf of bills involving opioids.
"When I discovered that my Attorney General was a lobbyist who helped the state to be inundated with pills, I was caught off guard," said a West Virginia nurse in an advertisement. for the Manchin campaign published earlier this year.
But even on an issue that sparked a compelling desire for action, political considerations quickly took over. Some think that lawmakers have excited the bill to boast a victory before polling day. Some controversial aspects of the House – such as giving the Attorney General the power to create a special category for synthetic drugs and sanctioning those who manufacture them or sell them – have been removed from the final legislation to ensure that they are safe. adoption.
The law contains a measure sponsored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Min.) Who will close a loophole allowing traffickers to more easily send fentanyl, a synthetic opioid responsible for the sharp increase in overdose deaths, by mail, mainly from China.
It will also focus on treatment, creating a subsidy program for recovery centers that includes housing and vocational training. It also increases access to drug treatments, in which an addict takes an opioid under medical supervision and is eventually weaned off the drug. It allows broader coverage of drug treatment in Medicaid and Medicare.
Public health officials said the new law was an important first step in the fight against the opioid crisis, but said it was changing the problem rather than treating it directly.
"It's a very good starting point. But I call this the first wave and I hope the second wave will begin, "said Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. "It's all but the sink of the kitchen. Anyone who has an idea of how to deal with the opioid crisis has a bill at their disposal. "
Congress has earmarked $ 8.5 billion for opioid programs this year, but there is no guarantee of additional funding in years to come. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) And Representative Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) Proposed $ 100 billion over 10 years to fight the opioid crisis.
"I think it's going in the right direction, but I think it's terribly underfunded," said Chinazo Cunningham, professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. "It's a feeling to me that it's not really a coordinated effort, it's a joke, honestly, a little on the edge."
In September, the Trump administration announced the award of more than $ 1 billion in grants to fight opioids, primarily for treatment and prevention.
The signing of the bill comes almost a year after Trump declared a public health emergency for opioids. A report released by the Government Accountability Office this week revealed that this statement only resulted in additional steps, such as the survey of doctors on how they prescribe a drug used to treat opioid addiction.
Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.
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