The White House recently released its 2022 national drug policy that will guide the president’s plan to address the addiction and overdose epidemic. The most recent figures cite nearly 107,000 deaths in the past 12-month period from this scourge. The National Drug Control Strategy will focus on the areas of untreated addiction and drug trafficking.
The president quoted the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) that of 41.1 million people needing treatment for substance use disorders, only 2.7 million (6.5%) of them received treatment in the previous year.
The president’s plan will address addiction and overdose through:
- Expanding harm reduction
- Ensuring access to treatment
- Building the treatment workforce
- Improving treatment for the incarcerated and re-entry populations
- Improving data and research to guide future drug policy development
Also, the effort to reduce drug trafficking and illicit drug profits will focus on:
- Obstructing and disrupting financial activities of transnational criminal organizations (TCOs)
- Reducing the illicit drug supply through domestic collaboration and international coordination
- Reducing the supply of illicit drugs smuggled across U.S. borders through a $300 million budget increase to support the work of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and a $300 million increase for the Drug Enforcement Administration
Finally, federal agencies are directed to assist the national effort through:
- Expanding prevention among children and young adult
- Supporting community prevention coalitions to implement evidence-based strategies
- Expanding understanding of recovery
- Increasing economic opportunities for those in recovery
- Increasing medication assisted treatment for incarcerated people
- Advancing racial equity in justice process
- Diverting non-violent incarcerated people to treatment as appropriate
- Expanding services for post-incarceration re-entry
Read the 2022 National Drug Control Strategy
