Beruflich Dokumente
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Professor Gutaj
“The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing
drugs in the first place. If they don’t, they won’t have a problem anyway, (President Donald J.
Trump, 2017).” Drug addiction and opioid use are ravaging America, from coast to coast, with
hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from a crisis that spiraled out of control for reasons we
now know could have been preventable. Research data suggests the problem is only getting worse
While running for President in 2016, Donald Trump campaigned on many important
topics, along with promises of how he would implement or reform what is broken. It wasn’t that
long ago that we witnessed a wild Trump rally on television with thousands of his supporters
chanting, “build the wall, build the wall.” According to Trump, building a border wall is
absolutely dyer in solving many of our country’s biggest problems, from illegal migration to drug
smuggling along the southern border (whitehouse.gov). Trump’s passion surrounding the border
wall runs deep. During the presidential campaign, Trump shared a very personal experience of
addiction and loss, which gives credence to his passion toward drug addiction, a border wall, and
the current out of control opioid epidemic. The President’s beloved brother, Fred Trump, battled
his own addiction for many years, and ultimately died from alcoholism. This family tragedy
shaped President Trump’s life from that day forward, and is the reason for his own life long
Executive Order establishing the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the
Opioid Crisis, with the following mission statement: To study the scope and effectiveness of the
Federal response to drug addiction and the opioid crisis and to make recommendations to the
President for improving that response. During this ceremony, President Trump expressed, “I made
a promise to the American people to take action to keep drugs from pouring into our country and
to help those who have been so badly affected by them… This is an epidemic that knows no
boundaries and shows no mercy, and we will show great compassion and resolve as we work
Before the committee gave final recommendations in November 2017, they expressed that
its first and most urgent recommendation was for President Trump to declare a national
emergency, to free up emergency funds for the crisis and “awaken every American to this simple
fact: If this scourge has not found you or your family yet, without bold action by everyone, it soon
will” (hhs.gov).
To help get a better understanding of what the opioid epidemic looks like, we can look at a
study entitled, 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (hhs.gov). Here is what we know…
In 2016, more than two million people had an addiction to prescription or illicit opioids.
In 2016, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States,
o This exceeds the number of Americans killed daily in the Vietnam War.
o The rise in overdose deaths is largely due to the proliferation of illicitly made
prescriptions opioids in the past year, and nearly 950,000 Americans reported heroin use in
In 2016, the cost of the opioid epidemic was over 504 Billion dollars (HHS.GOV).
How did we get here? What led up to this crisis? Who is at fault? What if it doesn’t affect me?
Should everyone care? Who are the stakeholders? What will be the cost to reform the crisis? With
so many questions, it’s vital that all American citizens be informed and engaged in the emergency
efforts that are taking place. Awareness is always the first step. Furthermore, awareness leads to
education of how the epidemic started, and what caused it to spin so out of control to the point of
an emergency crisis,
In the late 1990’s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical providers that patients
would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers. With this false knowledge, healthcare
providers began to prescribe opioids. The increase of prescription opioid medication led to
widespread misuse around the country of both prescription and non-prescription opioids before it
became very clear that these medications were high risk and very addictive. Not only has the
prescription of opioids increased, doctors began treating pain with opioids at higher doses and for
longer durations of time, which has been highly associated with abuse, addiction, and overdose
(NIH.GOV).
Among the demographics of those misusing opioid drugs, there is an alarming increase of
opioid misuse during pregnancy, which results in a drug withdrawal syndrome in newborn babies
called neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). In 2014 the number of babies born drug-dependent
had increased by 500 percent since 2000, and children place in foster care due in part to NAS is
and illegal use of opioid related drugs, the lack of treatment and recovery has been ineffective.
Basically, the second issue is a lack of a health system and healthcare provider’s capability to
identify and engage patients at risk, and provide them with high-quality, evidence based opioid
addiction treatment. Or in other words, healthcare providers were not trained, and thus failed, to
provide a full spectrum of medication-assisted treatment (MAT). Research from the 2016 opioid
epidemic study, it is well documented that the majority of people with opioid addiction in the U.S.
do not receive treatment, and even among those who do, many do not receive evidence based
MAT, and fail to recover. Sadly, the 2016 study makes one thing clear… “too many of our
citizens are being robbed of their God-given potential in the prime of their life” (DHH.GOV).
Since President Trump declared the opioid crisis as a Nationwide Health Public Emergency in
October 2017, and renewed for another 90 days in January 2018, his entire administration is
collaborating together in combatting the crisis. Each of the President’s cabinet is determining their
role in this multi-faceted and multi-dimensional epidemic. Due to this collaboration, crucial
More than $1 Billion in funding has been allocated or spent directly for prevention,
treatment, first responders, prescription drug monitoring programs, recovery and other care
The CDC has launched the Prescription Awareness Campaign; a multimedia awareness
campaign featuring the real-life stories of people who have lost loved ones to prescription
The Food and Drug Administration is imposing new requirements on the manufacturers of
prescription opioids to help reverse the overprescribing that has fueled the crisis.
The Department of Justice’s Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit is targeting
individuals that are contributing to the prescription opioid epidemic, has netted the largest-
ever health care fraud takedown, secured the first-ever indictments against Chinese
fentanyl manufacturers, and seized AlphaBay, the largest criminal marketplace on the
The State Department has secured a binding UN agreement making it harder for criminals
The National Institutes of Health has initiated discussions with the pharmaceutical industry
and Department of Health and Human Services are collaborating on a six-year, $81 million
The final report from The President’s Commission on Combatting Addiction and the Opioid
finalizing his plan, President Trump considered the Commission’s Recommendations, as well as
recommendations from other world leaders in his final initiative plan. On March 18, 2018, in the
state of New Hampshire, President Trump unveiled his Administration’s Initiative to Stop Opioid
Abuse. The plan includes three main elements: reducing the demand and over prescription of
opioids, cutting off the supply of illegal drugs and increasing treatment and recovery services.
First, the new initiative aims to cut opioid prescriptions by one-third within three years by
monitoring opioid prescriptions to help flag people requesting prescriptions of opioid pain killers
by several different physicians. Second, the Initiative includes an increase of law enforcement
measures, allowing the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for some drug dealers
where appropriate under the current law. There is much controversy and debate regarding Trump’s
passion for using the death penalty already in law for several limited drug related offenses… for
example, through violations of the ‘drug kingpin’ provisions in 18 USC 3591(b) and 21 USC 848
(e). Also, Trump is calling on Congress to pass legislation to invoke maximum punishment for
drug dealers who knowingly distribute certain illicit opioids in trace amounts. The House Energy
and Commerce Committee are hammering out legislation and plan to submit a package to the
House floor by Memorial Day weekend. Lastly, the plan includes a mix of efforts from advocates
to expand access for the gold standard of treatment for addiction, and make it mandatory for first
In conclusion, the opioid epidemic has grown exponentially over the past two decades, and is
now killing over 175 lives per day… a number higher than people killed in unintentional deaths
altogether. Time will tell if The Administration’s Initiative will be successful. Obviously, it will
not occur overnight, but with patience and hard work, this plan seeks to restore hope in the lives of
those suffering the hell of drug addiction, along with the family and friends in their support
system. For those personally involved in the crisis, one Surgeon General of the U.S. gives his
encouragement, when he expressed, “we need to stop seeing addiction as a moral failing and start
treating it as the chronic illness it is, one that demands our skill, urgency and compassion. Once
The Department of Health and Human Services. 2017. About the U.S. Opioid Epidemic. Retrieved
McCaskill, Nolan D. 2017. Trump shares cautionary tale of his alcoholic brother Fred. Retrieved
alcoholic-244213http://thehill.com/homenews/politics-101/376508-what-caused-the-
opioid-crisis
Murthy, V. 2018. We know what strategies work. Retrieved on March 1, 2018 from
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/01/29/175-americans-dying-day-
what-solutions-opioid-epidemic/1074336001/
Office of National Drug Control Policy: Presidents Commission. 2017. Retrieved on March 1,
Roubein, R. 2018. Trump to release opioid plan Monday that includes death penalty. Retrieved on
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/378618-trump-opioid-plan-will-include-death-
penalty-for-drug-dealers-reportg-action-drug-addiction-opioid-crisis/
Schallhorn, K. 2018. How the White House is tackling the opioid epidemic. Retrieved on March
opioid-epidemic.html
White House. 2018. The President’s Commission on Combatting Drug Addiction and the
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Final_Report_Draft_11-1-
2017.pdf