Biden Administration Announces $450M for Drug Overdose Treatment, Prevention

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it would spend an additional $450 million to address drug overdoses and said that its efforts in this area so far have been working.

“The Biden-Harris administration is taking action to beat the overdose epidemic, and more importantly, to save lives,” Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff said on a Zoom call with reporters, which was timed to coincide with International Overdose Awareness Day. “We know the overdose epidemic is a national crisis … We’re investing billions to address addiction and the overdose epidemic and to keep communities healthy and safe.”

“Because of the historic investments of the Biden-Harris administration, overdoses have flattened in 2022 after sharp increases from 2019 to 2021,” Emhoff said. “This shows that the efforts of the Biden-Harris administration are working.”

During a question-and-answer session, MedPage Today asked administration officials how they knew that it was the spending that was helping drive down overdoses, and not other factors. “Think about a large ship; it has to be slowed down before it’s turned around,” a senior administration official said. “And that’s where we are. The amount of funding that you have seen in this administration so far — for helping people get treatment, save lives, and reach recovery — is $83 billion … What that means is this is real money going into communities.”

Last year, dispensing of the drug overdose medication naloxone increased by 37%, while the price of that drug dropped 12%, the official added. “We all know that when we have more accessible and affordable drug overdose reversal medications available to people, lives are saved. That’s just one example.” The administration also has sanctioned companies and drug cartels and Chinese companies that have exported illegal drug precursor ingredients to the U.S., and expanded access to addiction treatment via telehealth, the official said.

The $450 million in new spending includes distributions from the following agencies:

The CDC is awarding $279 million in Overdose Data to Action grants to states and localities to expand harm reduction strategies, link people to care, and make the latest data available; this also includes overdose prevention funding grants to state health departments.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is awarding more than $80 million to rural communities in 39 states to help them respond to the overdose risk from illicit fentanyl and other opioids. These awards will support distributing naloxone, creating and expanding treatment sites in rural areas, expanding access to youth behavioral healthcare, and providing care for infants in rural areas who are at risk for opioid exposure.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is awarding more than $57.6 million for substance use treatment and recovery support services. That money includes nearly $30 million for the Promoting the Integration of Primary and Behavioral Health Care Program to improve both overall wellness and physical health status of several types of patients: adults who have a serious mental illness; adults who have co-occurring mental illness and physical health conditions or chronic disease; children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances who have co-occurring physical health conditions or chronic disease; patients with substance use disorders; and patients with co-occurring substance use and mental disorders.

The SAMHSA funding also includes $6.6 million for the Rural Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Training Grant Program, which recruits and trains EMS personnel in rural areas with a particular focus on addressing substance use disorders and co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. Recipients will be expected to train EMS personnel on trauma-informed care for people with such disorders in emergency situations.

Asked about why deaths from fentanyl overdoses increased in 2022 even as overdoses were decreasing, a senior administration official noted that although such an increase has occurred, “we began to see just more recently a slowing in the increase of deaths. I’m still very concerned that when you look at emerging substances like xylazine, and certainly the fentanyl analogues that are out there, this is why the continued resources are really necessary so that we are addressing these emerging substances, because many of them are quite lethal. This is not the time to reduce our prevention efforts or harm reduction efforts.”

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