Opioid Treatment Advocates Lose Trust and Faith in Trump
Trump’s trail of broken promises leave treatment advocates and families losing hope.
One of the issues Trump campaigned on was to fight the devastation opioid addiction has caused in states across the country, particularly the “Rust Belt.” He even tied the issue to a personal story of his – the death of his brother, Fred.
But opioid treatment advocates are starting to realize that Trump was just making empty campaign promises.
CNN interviewed Erin Canterbury, who had voted for New Hampshire Democrats for over a decade, but voted for Trump after hearing him at a roundtable on the state’s opioid epidemic.
She trusted Trump and, withstanding vocal criticism from her friends, proudly backed him over Hillary Clinton. “I expected him to do something,” Canterbury said. “I didn’t expect it to be fixed, but I expected something.”
With months into his presidency, Trump has done little to help these communities. The one thing Trump has done – propose to virtually eliminate the Office of National Drug Control Policy by slashing their funding by 94% in his proposed 2018 budget.
Canterbury told CNN, “I feel like this issue now goes on the back burner for him. But he needs to know, ‘no, we aren’t going to shut up about this in New Hampshire.'”
“He hasn’t done anything thus far,” said the 39-year-old mother of two, who is almost seven years sober after getting addicted to prescription painkillers. “I don’t want to say I completely regret it. But he hasn’t done anything.”
According to the CDC, Opioid overdoses have reached epidemic levels. A recent study from the agency found that 25 percent of all drug overdose deaths were related to heroin in 2015, a dramatic increase from 199 when that number was just 6 percent.
