President Trump Pledges To Declare Opioid Emergency ‘next week’ Again

President Trump Pledges To Declare Opioid Emergency ‘next week’ Again

President Donald Trump once again promised to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency “next week” during an interview on Wednesday, the latest in a string of pledges on the matter that have so far gone unfulfilled.

“Next week, I’m going to declaring an emergency, national emergency on drugs. The opioid is a tremendous emergency, what’s going on there,” President Trump told Fox Business on Wednesday.

Just over a week prior, the president similarly vowed to make the declaration official in a week’s time, saying the “major announcement” on opioids would come “probably next week.” The president is expected to make a highly anticipated announcement regarding the opioid crisis Thursday afternoon, but top health officials in his administration remain uncertain about what exactly it will be.

“We don’t have information about what the announcement will be, and so I can’t comment on it. I honestly don’t know,” Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for mental health and substance use, told POLITICO on Wednesday.

The emergency declaration would enable government officials to more quickly fund responses to the drug epidemic. It comes with a recommendation from the Trump’s own advisory board on the subject, the White House Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — another prominent Republican politician who has vowed to grapple with the opioid crisis.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to combat the opioid epidemic. His administration, though, has yet to deliver on codifying the extent of the crisis, a pledge he made outright while addressing reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in August.

“I’m saying officially right now, it is an emergency. It is a national emergency,” he said, according to a White House press pool report. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis.”

The president has said that boosting security on the southern U.S. border would also serve to curtail the flow of drugs into the country and alleviate the strain of opioids on Americans — an approach he again advocated Wednesday on Fox Business.

“You know, part of the reason we need the wall is for drugs,” the president said. “Forgetting even about people, we need a wall for drugs. And the wall’s coming along.”