President Trump on Thursday comforted those who lost children to the opioid epidemic and decried “weak” U.S. penalties against drug pushers, saying countries with harsher penalties, including executions, have less of a problem.
In a surprise visit to a White House summit on the crisis, Mr. Trump said his whole administration is working to defeat the scourge of painkiller and heroin abuse.
“The administration is going to be rolling out policy over the next three weeks, and it will be very, very strong,” he said. “I think we’ve been involved more than any administration, by far.”
Mr. Trump pivoted from words of comfort to harsh talk about drug dealers and traffickers, suggesting “blue ribbon” commissions won’t solve the problem and that the U.S. should impose tougher penalties.
“Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty,” he said. “By the way, they have much less of a problem.
“If you shoot one person, they give you life [imprisonment], they give you the death penalty. These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people, and nothing happens to them,” he said at the summit, which served as a progress report on his October call to treat opioid addiction as a public health emergency.
First lady Melania Trump said the administration’s work plan has been divided into three buckets — prevention, treatment and recovery — and that her personal focus will be on young mothers and their babies, who might be born with opioid withdrawal symptoms.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is letting states cut red tape under their Medicaid programs so that more people have access to treatment beds.
A mother at the White House event said her son, Ryan, died of an overdose in a Macy’s restroom while he was on the wait list for recovery programs, so she welcomes efforts to expand capacity.
Others applauded the White House for encouraging survivors of addiction to share their stories so families seek support instead of isolating themselves.
“That’s going to go a long way toward breaking down the barriers of stigma,” said Kathryn Helgaas Burgum, the first lady of North Dakota, who once struggled with alcoholism and has turned her experience it into a push to combat opioid addiction.
Beyond prevention and treatment, the administration is employing a get-tough stance toward drug traffickers and opioid manufacturers, which may have fueled the crisis through aggressive marketing of their products.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to re-examine how it sets quotas for the number of pain pills produced per year. He said the U.S. is an outlier in how many opioid prescriptions are written.
“I’ve also spoken with Jeff about bringing a lawsuit against some of these opioid companies,” Mr. Trump said.
Opioid-related overdoses killed 42,000 people in 2016 alone. Estimates suggest that the problem worsened last year as fentanyl filtered through the illicit heroin market.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said manufacturers are reporting that it is difficult to find enough workers who can pass a drug test.
“That gives you an idea of some of the pervasiveness of this in our society,” he said.
Likewise, Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican, said that “because of opioids, millions of workers are off-line, unavailable at a time when our economy is growing and workforce shortages are growing.”
“What a waste,” Mr. Portman told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at an event Thursday blocks from the White House.
Mr. Portman cited research from the Brookings Institution and Labor Department that found nearly half of able-bodied men ages 25 to 54 take pain medication on a daily basis.
Democrats have urged Mr. Trump to act faster because they have yet to see results from his emergency declaration. They say proposals to curtail federal spending on Medicaid will only make the problem worse.
“The Trump administration has established worthwhile panels, commissions, reports and recommendations regarding the federal response to the opioid epidemic, but this work still hasn’t translated into a commitment of real resources, particularly for treatment,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat.
The administration insists it is making progress, even if change won’t happen overnight.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he will be aggressive in warning consumers about opioid-related products or taking them off the market.
His agency just sent a letter to online retailers such as Amazon about the perils of shipping large quantities of anti-diarrhea medicines that can be manipulated to create an opioid effect in the body. The agency also cracked down on the sale of products with kratom, an herb from Southeast Asia with opioid properties.
“We’re trying to take more aggressive steps upfront,” Mr. Gottlieb told the chamber.
Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said her agency is simultaneously advising doctors on how to get smart about opioid use, after legions of people who took opioid painkillers turned to cheaper heroin that is often cut with fentanyl, a deadly synthetic.
She said the amount of opioids prescribed in 2015 was three times as high as it was in 1999 — enough for every American to be medicated, around the clock, for three weeks.
“We have had decades, now, of overprescribing that’s led to overdose deaths,” she told the Chamber of Commerce. “We know that we can do better.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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