President Obama has proposed $1.1 billion in new mandatory funding for a program to pay for heroin and drug abuse treatment, according to a White House statement.
The majority of the funding, or $920 million, will go to states to expand access to treatment. The rest of the funding will go to the National Health Service Corps to help 700 providers provide substance abuse treatment and $30 million will go to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment programs.
While spending on this issue has increased over time, the heroin epidemic is getting worse. On a conference call today, Secretary Sylvia Burwell of the Department of Health and Human Services explained that the programmatic funding for this issue went from 24 million to 127 million from fiscal year 2015 to 2016, and in fiscal year 2017 it will reach $1.1 billion.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heroin use has more than doubled in the past decade. Burwell and Michael Botticelli, director of the National Drug Control Policy, was asked about this trend and why opioid use was up under President Obama’s watch.
"While we have seen dramatic increases in opioid overdoses I think that we have begun to see signs of progress in terms of some of the work of the administration," said Botticelli. "So prescription drug use is actually down among youth, it’s actually down among young adults so we’ve seen a beginning in terms of payoff."
"I think this underscores that we need to take more action, the president understands the urgency of this issue that we have made some progress but we need to do more particularly as it relates to people accessing treatment," he said.