Ending the worst drug crisis in U.S. history

Six months before Donald J. Trump was elected President, a group of health experts wrote a private letter with “an urgent plea” to senior officials in the Obama Administration.

“Thousands of people were dying from overdoses of fentanyl — the deadliest drug to ever hit U.S. streets — and the [Obama] administration needed to take immediate action. The epidemic had been escalating for three years,” The Washington Post reported last week. “The administration considered the request but did not act on it.”

When President Trump took office 8 months later, the opioid crisis was devastating communities across the country. Nearly 64,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2016 alone. Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 of these deaths—more than any previous year on record.

In October 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. And one year ago today, he introduced the Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse, a historic effort to cut off the illicit drug supply and drive down demand in the United States.

The results should give all Americans hope:

During the President’s first year in office, 68 percent fewer Americans over the age of 26 began using heroin than during the previous year.
In July 2017, the Department of Justice shut down the country’s biggest Darknet distributor of drugs. That same Fiscal Year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took more than 2,300 pounds of fentanyl off the streets.
The Trump Administration’s public awareness campaign highlighting the dangers of opioid abuse has been seen by 58 percent of young Americans and 1.4 billion viewers in total.

“We will liberate our country from this crisis,” President Trump said last year when he unveiled his initiative. “And we will raise a drug-free generation of American children.”

Under this President, the carnage of America’s worst drug crisis will not be ignored.

President Trump’s nationwide call to action to end our opioid crisis.

By the numbers: How President Trump is helping America recover

Watch President Trump host Brazil’s new leader

Today, President Trump welcomed the recently elected President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, to the White House.

President Bolsonaro’s election marked a historic opportunity for the United States and Brazil—the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere—to build a new partnership focused on increased prosperity, strong security, and national sovereignty.

Perhaps most important, Brazil is a crucial ally in President Trump’s stand against the corrupt, socialist Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela. President Bolsonaro reiterated that Brazil stands with Venezuelan Interim President Juan Guaido, as well as with the democratically elected National Assembly and the Venezuelan people in their fight against tyranny.

“The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere,” President Trump said from the Rose Garden this afternoon. “And hopefully, by the way, it’s also arrived—that twilight hour—in our great country.”

“I have always admired the United States of America,” President Bolsonaro added. “And this sense of admiration has just increased after you took office.”

Watch President Trump: “We have a truly historic chance.”

More: The full joint statement from the two leaders

Photo of the Day

Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

President Trump and senior Administration officials receive an update in the Oval Office on the President’s Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse | March 19, 2019