Trumps signs "historic" law to combat opioid addiction

Read: James Winnefeld Jr. Commits to Fight the Opioid Crisis

Formed in 1988 under the Anti-Drug Act, the ONDCP is expected to coordinate drug control policy and funding for 16 federal departments and agencies. The director of the office is supposed to be the "chief adviser" of the US president on drug control issues. The Senate must confirm who the President appoints.

Trump's first candidate, Tom Marino, retired shortly after Washington Post said he had supported legislation that weakened the capacity of the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on companies that were engaged in fish drug shipments.

Trump's second candidate, James Carroll, a former White House deputy chief of staff, has been heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee and is awaiting confirmation. Carroll was first appointed deputy director of the office and then acting director, but had to give up his acting headteacher title when Trump officially appointed him to head the office. He remains his highest official.

"I do not think having a director makes any difference in who will meet you, when they will meet you, when they are listening to you when they meet you, that sort of thing," says Regina LaBelle, former chief of staff at the ONDCP under the Obama administration and independent consultant for nonprofit organizations on the opioid epidemic.

Read: Another shocking statistic about opioids

The office has not yet published the annual national drug control strategy, which explains how the administration will tackle drugs or establish a budget for drug control. Three months after taking office, Trump opted for an unorthodox approach to drugs, creating the President's Commission on Drug Abuse and the Opioid Crisis, chaired by Trump's political ally, Governor Chris Christie. The commission, staffed and funded by the ONDCP, issued a report recommending nearly 60 solutions to the crisis. Recommendations cover prevention, treatment, recovery, etc.

"When Assistant Director Carroll joined the ONDCP, he began a process of reviewing and formulating the National Drug Control Strategy," says Charmaine Yoest, Deputy Director of the Office of External Affairs of the ONDCP. review that is moving very quickly. She said the strategy would build on Christie's report.

"I think most of us would say they did a good job," says Stanford University professor Keith Humphreys, who is studying substance abuse interventions, about the Christie commission report. . "They listened attentively. This committee was made up of very intelligent and certainly knowledgeable people who produced a very good report. "

But he thinks the commission's work may not have been necessary, given the US Surgeon General's historic drug abuse report, Jerome Adams, almost a month after the 2016 election. " The essence of the report of the commission is in this report, "he says. "I think the fact that it was ignored was just a big mistake."