President Biden is coming under growing pressure to take decisive action on national drug crises, as the overdose death toll surged to nearly 88,000 in 2020—a record number and a 29 percent increase over the year before—erasing modest progress over the past few years. Biden, who promised to combat the opioid epidemic during the campaign, has been slow to commit resources to a rigorous anti-drug effort and to fill out his drug policy staff, including the “drug czar” to oversee and coordinate policies and programs. In a letter to the White House, dozens of organizations in the addiction field—including Treatment Communities of America—called on the administration to “act with urgency” on the ongoing addiction crisis. This includes expanding access to the life-saving withdrawal medication buprenorphine, which currently requires that physicians have special training to prescribe it.
The president must also commit more funding to drug treatment, as the American Rescue Plan allocates only $1.5 billion for this purpose—compared to the $125 billion over the next decade Biden had proposed. New CDC data confirms that the epidemic, once found largely among white Americans in rural and suburban areas, now impacts Blacks disproportionately. What’s more, dealers are lacing non-opioids such as meth and cocaine with opioids—including fentanyl and heroin—thereby significantly increasing the risk of overdose.