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State and county public health departments and nonprofit groups are reeling after the Trump administration announced abrupt cancellation and revocation of roughly $11.4 billion in COVID-era funding for grants linked to addiction, mental health and other programs.
The federal grant funding had been scheduled to run through September 2025. In a statement sent to NPR, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it made sense to freeze the program immediately.
Street drugs still kill more than 84,000 people in the U.S. every year, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Donald Trump has made fentanyl smuggling a top concern during the opening weeks of his administration, extending an emergency declaration linked to the powerful street opioid.
But his team has also rapidly slashed the number of federal researchers focused on addiction and Trump pardoned a tech mogul convicted of building a "dark web" platform used to traffic illicit drugs.
"Senselessly ripping away this funding Congress provided will undermine our state's ability to protect families from infectious diseases like measles and bird flu and to help people get the mental health care and substance use treatment they need," said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state, in a statement.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said her state would lose roughly $300 million in funding, much of it earmarked for county health departments in rural areas. "At a time when New York is facing an ongoing opioid epidemic, multiple confirmed cases of measles and an ongoing mental health crisis, these cuts will be devastating," Hochul said. "There is no state in this country that has the financial resources to backfill the massive federal funding cuts."
A spokesperson for Colorado's Behavioral Health Administration said $250 million in federal cuts to her state would affect as many as 60 programs and could put patients at risk. "In so many cases, these are life-saving programs and services, and we worry for the wellbeing of those who have come to count on this support".
Addiction experts told NPR they are now bracing for what many believe will be deep cuts to Medicaid funding, which provides the largest single source of insurance coverage for drug and alcohol treatment nationwide: "It's very hard to look at the budget framework created by Republicans and imagine a scenario other than Medicaid being cut severely," Stanford University's Keith Humphreys said. "It's a frightening prospect. That will be extremely painful for families facing addiction." He warned the move could trigger layoffs and treatment disruptions. "Services will be dropped in the middle. Bang, the clinic is closing. It's a brutal way to make these cuts" .
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
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