Politics: Trump to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the opioid crisis, a decision in line with what White House Opioid Commission recommended on July 31.

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the opioid crisis on Thursday.

The decision's in line with what the White House Opioid Commission recommended on July 31, though on Tuesday, Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price said that Trump didn't plan to declare the emergency.

At a news conference, Trump said he planned to spend a lot of time and money on addressing the opioid epidemic.

"We’re going to draw it up and we’re going to make it a national emergency. It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had," Trump said. "You know when I was growing up they had the LSD and they had certain generations of drugs. There’s never been anything like what’s happened to this country over the last four or five years."

Trump can declare the opioid crisis a national emergency under the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act, a decision that’s usually reserved for natural disasters.

More than 183,000 people died from overdoses related to prescription opioid painkillers like oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, and morphine over the last 15 years.

The declaration elevates the severity of the epidemic.

“It means every state health department, local government and the federal government would treat this as the top priority,” Dr. Guohua Li, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University told CNN.

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the opioid crisis, a decision in line with what White House Opioid Commission recommended on July 31. Read Full Story