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A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers is urging President Biden to make use of his State of the Union tackle on February 7 to announce that he’ll reinstate the director of the nationwide drug coverage workplace as a Cupboard-level official, to bolster the response to the nation’s drug disaster.
The chief of the Workplace of Nationwide Drug Management Coverage was final a Cupboard-level place in 2009. The workplace, established in 1988 by a legislation that then-Senator Biden helped craft, coordinates coverage throughout 19 businesses in addition to develops and implements the nationwide drug management technique and price range. It is a part of the whole-government strategy to addressing drug habit and overdose, according to its website.
“The drug overdose epidemic is one in every of our nation’s most urgent crises, claiming lives at an alarming price,” wrote the lawmakers in a letter to President Biden on Wednesday. “Re-elevating [the drug control office] to the Cupboard will permit it to marshal the complete assets of the federal authorities towards this scourge of overdoses and show to the Congress and the American folks your dedication to ending it.”
Rep. David Trone, D-Md., co-chair of the U.S. Fee on Combating Artificial Opioid Trafficking; Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the fee; Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Annie Kuster, D-N.H., Trone’s fellow co-chairs on the Bipartisan Psychological Well being and Substance Use Dysfunction Job Power; and 51 different members of Congress, signed onto the letter.
The lawmakers counseled Biden for saying in his State of the Union final yr that ending the opioid epidemic was a prime precedence for him and acknowledged the progress the nation has made; nonetheless, they famous there may be nonetheless a pattern of rising overdose deaths.
“Giving the [drug control office] director the identical stature as Cupboard members improves the director’s means to collaborate with, and coordinate interagency methods amongst equals,” stated the letter, including that the workplace touches on nationwide safety, legislation enforcement, public well being and commerce. “Having a Cupboard-level [drug control office] would additionally assist be certain that drug coverage is taken into account and prioritized throughout all coverage discussions, accountability for efficiency is standardized throughout businesses concerned in drug management actions, and the administration is ready to zealously reply to traits in drug use and overdose.”
The bipartisan, bicameral U.S. Fee on Combating Artificial Opioid Trafficking–which was established by the fiscal 2020 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act and has members from federal businesses, Congress and the personal sector–additionally made this advice in a report issued final yr. Comparable calls have come from different members of Congress, advocacy teams and commerce associations and remedy amenities because the place was downgraded in 2009, in response to the lawmakers.
The late Orrin Hatch wrote in The San Diego Union Tribune in March 2009, when he was a sitting Republican senator from Utah, that the downgrade of the drug coverage director “was a major departure from the precedent set in 1993 under President Clinton.” Hatch had beforehand served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a member of its crime and medicines subcommittee.
Through the Trump to Biden presidential transition, former Workplace of Nationwide Drug Management Coverage administrators and officers (who served below Republican and Democratic administrations), together with different public well being and substance abuse organizations, sent a letter to Biden and his transition team calling for the director position to be re-elevated.
The letter famous that in a confirmation hearing in October 2001 for John Walters, nominee for director of the Workplace of Nationwide Drug Management Coverage, then-Senator Biden stated, “I’ve argued that Cupboard-level standing is important to offer the place visibility commensurate with the depth of our nation’s drug downside.” Biden additionally stated he was glad that President George W. Bush “determined to make the drug czar a member of his Cupboard,” in response to the listening to transcript.
The White Home and the Workplace of Drug Management Coverage didn’t reply for remark.
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