White House commission urges Trump to declare national emergency over opioid epidemic Breaking News Aug 01, 2017

The White House commission looking into the ongoing opioid crisis has urged President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency to combat the epidemic. The panel, led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, said the opioid overdoses are claiming as many lives as the 9/11 terrorist attacks every three weeks.

“Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the Executive Branch even further to deal with this loss of life,” the commission said in an interim report on Aug. 1, 2017. According to the panel, set up by Trump in March this year, about 560,000 people have died from drug overdoses between 1999 and 2015.

The commission wrote to the U.S. president to waive a federal rule that reserves the access to residential addiction treatment to a limited number of Medicaid recipients. It also demanded the expansion of patients’ access to medications used to treat opioid addiction. To achieve this, members of the panel recommended “prescriber education initiatives” and model legislation for states to allow a standing order to help people with addiction receive naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.

Experts feel that declaring an emergency would make Americans acknowledge opioid menace as an urgency. It is noteworthy that governors of Maryland, Arizona, Florida and Virginia have declared state of emergency on opioid addiction in their respective states while Bill Walker, governor of Alaska, has issued a disaster declaration in his state.

However, some people are not in favor of the declaration of emergency. According to Dr. Tom Frieden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director during the Obama administration, declaring a public health emergency under the Stafford Act was usually reserved for natural disasters like hurricanes. Opioid crisis is not a natural disaster. Frieden suggested that stringent actions aimed at improving prescribing and cutting supply chain of illicit opioids can help reverse the epidemic.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration said it would “immediately” start reviewing the commission’s recommendations, CNN reported. “We appreciate the Commission’s hard work on this important interim report. We will immediately begin reviewing its recommendations, and eagerly await its final report,” the White House said in a statement.

Opioid addiction can be treated

Opioid overdose is rampant across the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids, including prescription drugs and heroin, were involved in more than 33,000 deaths in 2015. It is too early to predict if desperate measures like declaration of emergency on opioid would help curb the epidemic.

However, treating people with opioid addiction is the utmost priority at this point of time. Opioid addiction is treatable. If a person is grappling with opioid addiction, he/she should immediately seek professional help from a reputed mental health care provider.

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