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President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at coordinating a federal response to drug addiction and substance abuse, creating what the White House is calling the “White House Great American Recovery Initiative.”
According to a White House fact sheet, the initiative will advise federal agencies on directing grants to support addiction recovery and on integrating programs focused on prevention, early intervention, treatment, recovery support, and reentry. It will also seek to raise public awareness about drug and alcohol addiction.
“Many of those with me today have personally known the heartache of a loved one taken by drug or alcohol addiction. I do, just like millions of American families,” President Trump said during Oval Office remarks.
President Trump has frequently spoken about his older brother, Fred Trump Jr., and his long struggle with alcoholism.
“Every year we lose an estimated 300,000 people to drug and alcohol abuse. And the real number is probably much, much higher than that,” the president said. “Thankfully, drug overdose deaths plummeted by 21% in the last year. We’re working very hard on it.
“We’ve closed the southern border, seized over 47 million fentanyl pills and 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. That’s a record.”
The initiative will be chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kathryn Burgum, an advocate for addiction recovery and the wife of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Both attended the signing. Kennedy said nearly 50 million Americans suffer from substance use disorder, and many never receive treatment.
“The disease of addiction, also known as substance use disorder, is a crisis that touches families in every community and neighborhood in our Nation. 48.4 million Americans, or 16.8 percent of our Nation’s population, suffer from addiction, and my Administration will continue to respond to a crisis of this scale with the attention it deserves,” the order noted.
“Over the past year, we have made incredible progress in stopping the inflow of illegal drugs that threaten American communities. We must now supplement that work by furthering a national effort to prioritize addiction treatment and recovery,” it continued.