Branford Lawmaker Encouraged By Trump's 'National Emergency' Declaration On Opioid Crisis

By Jack Kramer, Correspondent

A Branford and Guilford state legislator who has been a leading voice in the state’s fight against the opioid crisis is encouraged that President Donald Trump recently declared the drug problem a “national emergency.”

“I’m very encouraged to see the President declare a national emergency when it comes to the opioid epidemic,” Rep. Sean Scanlon said.

Scanlon, who has been one of the biggest advocates for legislation combating the drug crisis the past few years in Connecticut, added: “This has been an emergency in our state and our country for years and hopefully this declaration will lead to additional federal funding we desperately need for prevention and treatment programs here in Connecticut.”

Scanlon authored a key piece of legislation, that signed into law by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, that limited the amount of prescription drugs that were handed out in large quantities for minor surgeries that Scanlon and others backing the legislation said were left in medicine cabinets where the risk of future abuse increases dramatically.

"The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially, right now, it is an emergency," Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey last week. "It’s a national emergency. We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis."

Trump's surprise announcement came two days after he vowed the U.S. would "win" the fight against the epidemic but stopped short of declaring it a national emergency. It was not immediately clear what prompted Trump's change of course. But he called the crisis "a serious problem the likes of which we have never had."

"You know when I was growing up they had the LSD and they had certain generations of drugs," Trump said. "There’s never been anything like what’s happened to this country over the last four or five years. And I have to say this in all fairness, this is a worldwide problem, not just a United States problem."

Trump’s change of mind was welcome news to those fighting the drug crisis in Connecticut.

Accidental drug intoxication deaths, which increased 25 percent in 2016, “are not decreasing,” Connecticut’s Chief Medical Examiner James Gill told first responders and community providers at a recent drug summit in Bridgeport.

Accidental drug intoxication deaths in the state over the past five years have spiked each year, starting with 357 in 2012; 495 in 2013; 568 in 2014; 729 in 2015; to 917 last year. There were more than 2.5 times as many deaths in 2016 than there were in 2012.

Experts said that the national emergency declaration would allow the executive branch to direct funds towards expanding treatment facilities and supplying police officers with the anti-overdose remedy naloxone.

It would also allow the administration to waive some federal rules, including one that restricts where Medicaid recipients can get addiction treatment.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who chairs the presidential opioid commission, thanked Trump "for accepting this first recommendation of our July 31 interim report."

"I am completely confident that the President will address this problem aggressively and do all he can to alleviate the suffering and loss of scores of families in every corner of our country," Christie said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing the Commission's efforts and to working with this President to address the approximately

Nearly 35,000 people across America died of heroin or opioid overdoses in 2015, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. But a new University of Virginia study recently released concluded the mortality rates were 24 percent higher for opioids and 22 percent higher for heroin than had been previously reported.