Trump says he will declare opioid crisis a ‘national emergency’ 'We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,' Trump said Thursday.

President Donald Trump said he’s drafting paperwork to declare the opioid crisis a "national emergency" just days after administration officials downplayed the need for such a declaration.

Trump made the announcement Thursday at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.


"I'm saying officially right now, it is an emergency. It is a national emergency," Trump said, according to a White House press pool report. "We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis."

Trump was briefed on the epidemic Tuesday by HHS Secretary Tom Price, who told reporters at the time that the administration believed the crisis could be effectively addressed without the declaration of an emergency. Trump vowed his administration would beat the epidemic by beefing up law enforcement and strengthening security on the southern border to stop illegal drugs from entering the country.

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On Thursday, he seemed to change his mind.

The emergency declaration, first recommended last week by the White House’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, enables the federal government to quickly free up funds to respond to the epidemic. It also allows Trump to say he's fulfilling a promise to combat opioid misuse that he made as a presidential candidate.

Trump handily won states like West Virginia and Kentucky that have been hit hard by the epidemic.

The president’s announcement comes just as new federal data shows drug overdose deaths are on the rise, despite federal and state efforts to curb the crisis. In the first nine months of 2016, the National Center for Health Statistics estimates drug overdose death hit a record 19.9 per 100,000 people — up from 16.7 for the same time period in 2015.

The opioid commission also recommended loosening decade-old Medicaid restrictions to increase access to inpatient substance abuse treatment and helping states strengthen prescription drug monitoring programs intended to weed out doctor shopping and improper prescribing.

It's unclear if Trump plans to accept those recommendations. The president's rhetoric on the opioid epidemic has largely focused on a law-and-order approach. He has not addressed increased access to treatment programs that health experts and some public officials, including those on his commission, say are necessary to get the drug epidemic under control.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who last week launched a unit dedicated to fighting opioid abuse and fraud, said the Justice Department will use “every tool we have” to combat the epidemic.

“I applaud President Trump for his leadership in taking this drastic and necessary measure to confront an opioid crisis that is devastating communities around the country and ripping families apart,” Sessions said in a statement.

State health officials have also expressed concern about the president's emphasis on law enforcement.

"We can’t jail our way out of this,” said Rahul Gupta, health commissioner for West Virginia, the state with the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the country. “This is a chronic public health disaster.”

Even law enforcement officials say they have told the president to focus not only on the criminal justice aspect of addressing the drug crisis, but to support a more comprehensive strategy involving public health and education departments as well.

"We want to encourage the president to focus on an all encompassing strategy instead of starting with law enforcement as the solution," National Sheriffs Association Executive Director Jonathan Thompson said.

