The question now is whether the White House will implement them.
On Wednesday, a commission convened by President Donald Trump to advise him on how the federal government should combat drug addiction and overdoses in the United States published its final recommendations. Led by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the group came up with more than 50 specific recommendations for the Trump administration, among them:
Some public-health experts are satisfied with the report’s action plan. «They’ve done an exceptionally good job, as I thought they would,» Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor and former advisor to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, says of Trump’s commission. «They’ve served their country well.»
The big question now is how many of these recommendations the Trump administration will implement. In a letter to the president, Christie expressed his confidence in the White House. «We know that you will not stand by,» he wrote. «We believe you will force action.» Kennedy, however, was not so optimistic. «The worry is that it won’t be adopted,» he told the Washington Post. Speaking with Pacific Standard, Humphreys doesn’t have too bright of an outlook, either. «It’s quite possible that this will be ignored,» he says.
In particular, the Trump administration has faced repeated criticism from experts over its unwillingness to spend the money needed to curb overdose deaths and its embrace of an Affordable Care Act repeal, which would deeply undermine mental-health treatment of all kinds in the U. S., including addiction care.
