President Trump’s plan to use a blizzard of advertising to help stem the opioid crisis faces a serious funding challenge.Similar initiatives have been backed by hundreds of millions in federal funding, but it’s not clear if – or how soon – the money for Trump’s initiative could come.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who helmed the president’s opioid commission, says the onus is on Congress to provide an influx of funding to curb the crisis of prescription painkiller and heroin overdose deaths plaguing the country.
But it often takes time to get additional funding through Congress. Though the opioid epidemic has been a bright spot of bipartisanship in the past, it’s far from certain an influx in federal funds could come quickly.
Advocates say it’s likely millions of dollars would need to be behind a national media blitz, which has emerged as one of many key components to combatting the crisis.”One of the things our administration will be doing is a massive advertising campaign to get people, especially children, not to want to take drugs in the first place,” Trump said, “because they will see the devastation and the ruination it causes to people and people’s lives.” The White House commission to address the opioid epidemic included an aggressive multimedia campaign as one of 56 recommendations in a 141-page final report released Wednesday.
“One of the things that we recommend to the president – in fact our first recommendation in this final report – is an extensive national media campaign paid for by the federal government with private sector partners,” Christie said at Wednesday’s opioid commission meeting.
