Proposals from President Donald Trump’s administration to combat the opioid epidemic include making overdose-reversal drugs more readily available and creating a nationwide database to keep track of patients seeking prescriptions for painkillers. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo Trump announces temporary memorial to opioid-abuse victims

President Donald Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter that he is “very pleased” that his administration will host a temporary memorial to victims of opioid abuse next month on the Ellipse just outside the White House.

“I am very pleased to welcome the opioid memorial to the President’s Park in April. I encourage all to visit and remember those who we have lost to this deadly epidemic,” Trump wrote on Twitter, linking to a post from the official White House account. “We will keep fighting until we defeat the opioid crisis!”


Trump has put combating opioid abuse at the center of his domestic agenda, traveling to New Hampshire — a state especially hard-hit by opioid abuse — earlier this month and announcing a set of administration proposals for combating addiction. Controversially, Trump has suggested imposing the death penalty for certain drug dealers and preventing the flow of drugs into the U.S. with his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Other proposals from the Trump administration include making overdose-reversal drugs more readily available, creating a nationwide database to keep track of patients seeking prescriptions for painkillers and expanding Medicaid coverage for inpatient addiction treatment.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that the exhibit would be open from April 12 to 18 and feature 22,000 pills, each with the face of a prescription-drug overdose victim carved into it.

“The White House, along with the National Park Service, will host the National Safety Council’s opioid memorial on the Ellipse in President’s Park,” she said. “These stories are tough to hear, and this exhibit will be an intensely emotional and somber experience. But it’s also a reminder that lives are at stake, and we must take action to end the plague of addiction that is ravaging communities all across our nation.”