Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, bashed the Trump administration for planning to cut a White House agency that fights drug abuse.
Portman, who sponsored legislation last year aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic, was upset about proposed cuts of $356 million to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
“We have a heroin and prescription drug crisis in this country and we should be supporting efforts to reverse this tide, not proposing drastic cuts to those who serve on the front lines of this epidemic,” Portman said.
The White House said a budget document that the reason for the steep cuts is to streamline the agency.
The cut, the administration said, is to “shift focus from duplicative and burdensome administrative tasks. This change will allow ONDCP to focus on identifying priorities and coordinating interagency efforts, particularly in policy development and implementation, in order to better address the top drug threats, including the opioid epidemic.”
In the 2017 continuing resolution to fund the government, the agency got $388 million in funding, but for 2018’s budget the White House seeks only $24 million.
The budget proposal also eliminates $250 million in funding for high-intensity drug trafficking areas, which concentrate drug control efforts in major drug trafficking zones.
Portman said that the areas are helpful for states like Ohio that are “ground zero for this problem.”
Portman was also perturbed the White House was going to eliminate funding from the Drug-Free Communities Support Act, which Portman authored as a House member in 1997.
“I’ve known and worked with our drug czars for more than 20 years and this agency is critical to our efforts to combat drug abuse in general, and this opioid epidemic, in particular,” Portman said in a statement Friday.
The White House sought to downplay the cuts to ONDCP. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday that combating opioid abuse was a “top priority” for President Trump.
