The United States continues to be plagued by an array of public health issues that were there when Donald Trump came into power and have hardly disappeared. One such issue is the opioid addiction crisis, which claims a massive number of lives each year.
The president has promised to do something about it, and now, POLITICO is reporting that the White House has a plan to combat the opioid crisis in the works. According to the publication, it could be released as soon as Monday, when the president is scheduled to visit New Hampshire — which has been hit hard by the crisis — with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
In a phone conversation last year, the president called New Hampshire a “drug infested den,” drawing wide condemnation, so him using a stop in the state as an opportunity to unveil a plan to combat the drug crisis would represent a plus for the state in the face of his past harshness towards it.
His plan includes items both widely praised and widely despised. Falling into the second category is a more formal proposal for a policy that the president has touted as a good idea in recent weeks — the death penalty for certain drug dealers.
One of the public appearances at which he advocated for such a plan was a recent rally for Republican Congressional candidate Rick Saccone. Saccone finished behind Democrat Conor Lamb in the race to fill the Congressional seat vacated by Tim Murphy, the anti-abortion Republican who resigned after it was revealed he’d sought to pressure a woman with whom he was having an affair into getting an abortion.
The White House plan would allow for the death penalty for drug dealers whose actions are found to be “directly responsible for death.”
When pressed about the president’s public comments in support of such an idea, Republican U.S. Senators made it clear that they weren’t impressed.
Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska commented:
‘I would have to strongly evaluate and look at any proposal like that. I don’t know if the president was serious or just said it off the cuff… It’s a big issue when you decide to bring a capital case or pass a law that allows for capital punishment.’
Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia was more direct in her dismissal of the president’s proposal for the death penalty for drug dealers, saying:
‘I mean, I get the message he’s delivering: We’ve got to treat it seriously. I don’t see that that’s going to solve the problem.’
Besides the idea to impose the death penalty for drug dealers, the White House has also proposed new health policy measures.
Those measures include making 75 percent of opioid prescriptions covered by government health services be issued according to “best practices” and upping that number to 95 percent within five years. The White House also wants to repeal a rule “barring Medicaid payment to residential treatment for opioid addiction at large facilities, which could cost tens of billions of dollars.”
The plan comes as the White House has had other plans — such as its infrastructure boosting proposal — so far fall flat.
Ironically, it also comes as the Trump administration has sought policies that would curtail access to government health services through such means as allowing states to impose a work requirement.
Featured Image via SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
