Kaptur Praises Breakthrough on Opioid Funding

Washington, DC — Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), today praised the unexpected inclusion in a Senate budget provision that would allow for $37 million in frontloaded spending to address the heroin and opioid epidemic.

The provision is included in the Senate’s version of the Continuing Resolution, or CR, which must pass Congress before October 1st to keep the federal government open. The CR provision, entitled “Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Implementation,” is a section that “provides through the duration of the Continuing Resolution a higher rate of operations for the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to begin implementation of CARA, and directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement that Act using FY 2017 funds.”

The provision will allow the Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to begin to spend available funds made possible by the enactment of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, which passed Congress and was signed into law in July, 2016. Otherwise, without this provision, the three departments and its frontline agencies would be forced to wait until a comprehensive budget agreement is reached, hopefully in December, to begin to support local treatment programs and local law enforcement agencies.

According to a report this afternoon from Congressional Quarterly:

“The GOP continuing resolution unveiled Thursday includes money needed to jump-start efforts authorized by a new opioid law (PL 114-198). The Senate measure would allow the Health and Human Services and Justice departments to start work on select new initiatives, something usually barred by CRs. HHS would be able to immediately start spending funds that, if annualized, would total $17 million. Similarly, Justice could begin spending funds that would total $20 million on an annualized rate for programs authorized by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, known as CARA, according to the text of the CR.

Most other federal programs will be stuck in budget limbo under the CR, with their spending rates slightly below the current level.”

While non-comital on the merits of the overall Senate budget proposal, given early news accounts, Kaptur was sanguine about the additional funding on the heroin and opioid programs: “We must pursue every opportunity to address this epidemic with more treatment funds,” she said. “This epidemic will only get worse, from what medical professionals and law enforcement officials in northern Ohio tell me. This is a positive step.”

The provision may be found on page two, here:

https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/092216-CR-FY17-Section-By-Section.pdf

Last week Kaptur leveraged her experience as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee and an active member of the House Bipartisan Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic, to lead a bipartisan coalition of 38 House Members to pressure for additional addiction treatment funds to be included in the short term budget deal being negotiated between the House and Senate to fund the government past the end of September. Kaptur spearheaded the effort with her colleagues, all of whom are from congressional districts facing a growing epidemic of heroin and opioid abuse, to send the letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to request a special exception to allow additional and adjusted funds to “address opioid enforcement, prevention, treatment, research, and recovery efforts.”

By the end of September Congress must consider a ‘continuing resolution,’ often referred to as a ‘CR,’ to keep the federal government operating beyond the statutory deadline of October 1. Kaptur realized that continuing funding levels for programs at last year’s levels and without adjusting funding for programs created under the new law passed over the summer, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, failed to realistically address the growing and urgent need for desperately affected communities.

The bipartisan House letter requests ‘budget anomalies,’ which would allow federal agencies to adjust funds to programs not reflected in last year’s funding bill and, therefore, not be reflected under a continuing resolution: “Recognizing American lives hang in the balance, we request consideration for appropriation anomalies in negotiations of a continuing resolution that reflect the advances made in the FY17 subcommittee bills, which address opioid enforcement, prevention, treatment, research, and recovery efforts. Funding as appropriated in FY16 simply does not reflect the current intent of Congress or come close to addressing the life-saving needs of our communities.”

Without Kaptur’s effort for a provision that allows for a redirecting of funds, federal agencies will be limited to prior year funding levels and programs.

In July Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which takes important steps toward addressing the opioid epidemic by creating new federal programs, such as research and new data collection methods, and continuing treatment programs. Unfortunately, CARA did not include emergency funding to support those on the frontlines addressing the opioid addiction crisis. Said Kaptur in July 2016 on the CARA legislation’s passage: “The bipartisan passage of CARA is certainly a positive step, and I supported it given that the alternative is to do nothing. But let’s not oversell it as a panacea to the heroin and opioid epidemic. It is not. Unlike other legislative responses to similar national emergencies, CARA contains no emergency funds, which can be spent right away. That delays funding for months, perhaps years. People are overdosing every day, communities need money now.”

The bipartisan letter to Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi addresses the funding shortage: “the House Appropriations Committee reflected many of the advances developed in CARA that address needed heroin and opioid funding changes in several of the FY17 subcommittee bills reported out of Committee. However, these funding adjustments will not be reflected in a continuing resolution, whether short or long-term, hamstringing our national response for Americans suffering and dying from heroin and opioid addiction. Congress’ inability to finish the appropriations process threatens to leave embattled communities without the funding and assistance they need to save lives.”

Some federal funds, previously appropriated, are finally being distributed. Three weeks ago, Ohio was selected by two health-related agencies, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which both focus on opioid misuse and overdoses, for three separate programs to receive nearly $2 million out of $53 million to “improve access to treatment for opioid use disorders, reduce opioid related deaths, and strengthen drug abuse prevention efforts. In addition, funding will also support improved data collection and analysis around opioid misuse and overdose as well as better tracking of fatal and nonfatal opioid-involved overdoses.”

In Ohio, deaths and overdoses from heroin and opioids have reached epidemic proportions. According to data released by the Ohio Department of Health, opioid overdoses killed a record 3,050 people in Ohio in 2015, more than one-third of them from fentanyl, a super-potent opiate often mixed with heroin. When the data includes heroin and opioids, Cuyahoga County has seen 1,386 people die from overdoses between 2010 to 2015. Deaths in 2016 are expected to exceed 500 in number, nearly double the total from 2015, according to William Denihan, the chief executive officer of the Cuyahoga County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board.

Earlier this month Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson reported a record 52 fatal overdoses attributed to either heroin or fentanyl occurred in the month of August. The total was the highest of any month in 2016, putting the county on track to have roughly 500 people die from the drugs, twice the 2015 overdose numbers.

In Lucas County roughly 3,000 reported non-fatal overdoses occurred in 2015, according to law enforcement sources. There were 215 heroin- and opioid-related deaths in 2015 in the 19 northwest Ohio counties and Branch and Hillsdale counties in Michigan for which the Lucas County Coroner’s Office performs autopsies. In 2016 the overdose death rate is up about 15 percent, with a projected annual death rate of roughly 250 heroin- and opioid-related deaths by the end of 2016.


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