President Donald Trump's opioid commission is expected to call for big boosts in substance abuse treatment programs Wednesday — but will not ask for new funding to pay for them, Politico reported.
Led by New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie, the panel will recommend the Trump administration boost access to addiction treatment and recovery programs, expand the availability of medication-assisted therapies, including expanding the ability of first responders to give the overdose reversal drug, naloxone, Politico reported, citing a draft of the final report it obtained.
The panel acknowledges a lack of funding hampers implementation, but does not lay out a figure, project how long money will be needed, or where it should come from, Politico reported.
Among its other recommendations, the panel calls for:
- An increase the number of doctors trained in addiction medicine, to fund research on new pain, overdose reversal and addiction treatments.
- Help for states to to share data from their prescription drug monitoring programs.
- A national media campaign.
- The restoration of funding for surveys of chronic drug users and morbidity information – including the Drug Abuse Warning Network that tracked drug mentions in hospital emergency rooms but ended in 2011.
"It's great to have good ideas, but you need money to implement them," Chuck Ingoglia, vice president of public policy at the National Council for Behavioral Health, told Politico. "How do any of these things get paid for?"
"Regarding the commission — thank you for reaffirming what we already knew," he added.
Andrew Kessler, who runs a Washington, D.C., consulting firm specializing in behavioral health, told Politico it is up to Congress to take the ideas and come up with appropriate funding.
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