Trump and Biden do not mention addiction care in debate

PBiden and former President Trump each had a chance Thursday to speak about a kitchen-table problem plaguing the nation: the addiction and drug overdose epidemic that claims more than 110,000 American lives each year.

One word was conspicuously missing from both of their answers: “treatment.”

Instead, during the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, the current and former president offered roundabout answers that addressed, at least vaguely, border security. Trump at one point referred to his administration’s purchase of drug-sniffing dogs. Biden, meanwhile, noted that Trump is currently blocking an immigration bill that would provide money to purchase fentanyl detection machines.

That neither Biden nor Trump even mentioned treatment was especially surprising given the specific question from Jake Tapper, one of the CNN moderators. He asked how the candidates would “help Americans who are currently in the grips of addiction, who are struggling to get the treatment they need.”

Neither candidate used the question as an opportunity to speak to Americans struggling with addiction or who have lost loved ones to overdose, or to tout their governments’ efforts to save lives.

Trump at first ignored the question altogether, returning instead to an unfinished answer about China and the trade deficits. Only when Tapper pressed him again did Trump address the issue, blaming rising drug deaths during his term on the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We were doing very well in addiction until Covid happened,” Trump said. But after the pandemic started, “the number of drugs flowing across the border started to increase.”

It is true that there are drug deaths rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is not true that they were not on the rise earlier. Overdose deaths had already been rising before the start of the pandemic, from about 65,000 per year when Trump took office in 2017 to 74,000 per year in March 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, the totals rose to record levels during Biden’s first years as president — a fact Trump was careful to emphasize.

“We have amazing equipment, we bought a particular dog that is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, the way they can recognize him,” Trump said. “We did a lot, and we got very low numbers,” Trump said, adding that “the number of drugs crossing our borders now is by far the most we’ve ever had.”

Overdose deaths, largely caused by fentanyl, have hovered around record highs in recent years. And while the Biden administration has refused to make the drug crisis a major issue, it has achieved some substantive policy results that the sitting president refused to tout.

In particular, the Biden administration has taken a historically open stance on the practice of harm reduction — essentially strategies that help people stay safer while using drugs, while admitting that requiring immediate abstinence is rarely practical.

Biden has also sought to significantly expand access to it methadone and buprenorphine, two common medications used to treat opioid addiction. Under Biden, Democrats in Congress have eliminated the “X-waiver,” a requirement that prescribers undergo hours of special training before treating patients with buprenorphine. More recently, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has brought this up new regulations allowing methadone clinics to treat patients with much more flexibility and compassion.

Biden didn’t mention it either light dip in total drug deaths from 2022 to 2023, the first decline in five years — and he avoided the subject of his son Hunter entirely, despite publicly offering his support amid his son’s struggles with addiction.

“Fentanyl and the byproducts of fentanyl went off the air for a while, and I wanted to make sure we were using machines that can detect fentanyl, these big machines that roll everything over the border,” Biden said, blaming Trump gave for blocking a bill. that would have financed the purchase of those machines. “That’s what we have to do: we need those machines.”