Trump budget cuts will hurt opioid addiction services in NYS and on LI

COVID-19 is over. That’s the explanation the Trump administration gave last week as it abruptly clawed back billions of dollars, including $1 billion appropriated to states via the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as part of the American Rescue Plan. A federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts on Thursday, but New York could lose more than $67 million, threatening lifesaving prevention programs, addiction treatment facilities, and mental health services on Long Island.

Some organizations have already closed programs and laid off staff; others are holding on, hoping for a permanent reprieve but waiting for the next shoe to drop with key programs like Medicaid also at risk.

The cuts came as our nation is finally turning the corner on the opioid crisis, which peaked during COVID but has returned to 2020 levels.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced a nearly 24% decline in overdose deaths for the year ending September 2024, compared to the previous year. That translates into 27,000 fewer fatalities. Those people are alive, at least in part, because of federal investments in care that have expanded access to medication-assisted treatment, brought mobile recovery units to underserved communities, and opened new clinics.

Saving an average of 74 lives per day is amazing, but three times as many people are still dying from fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and other street drugs. Overdose remains the leading cause of death among those ages 18-44.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has been public about his 14-year-long struggle with heroin addiction and takes pride in his recovery — seems to understand that there is still work to be done. He recently renewed the public health emergency declaration addressing the opioid crisis made by President Donald Trump in 2017.

But a week later, he also implemented the massive funding cuts to SAMHSA that would have decimated the continuum of care and sent people who have managed to survive the opioid crisis back into the streets without support or services.

Kennedy has backed Trump’s efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl from Mexico and China, but just axed 10,000 employees at HHS, including staff at SAMHSA, CDC and other agencies that direct addiction research, surveillance, prevention, treatment, and recovery.

If we’ve learned anything from America’s opioid epidemic that has claimed a million lives over the last 25 years, it’s that effective drug policy means addressing both supply and demand, not as competing priorities, but as a balanced approach to a nuanced problem.

Neither the disease of addiction nor fentanyl will wait around as treatment funding is slashed, restored, and then potentially cut again. Organizations can't operate that way, and people will die in the interim.

While a judge has stepped in to temporarily save these critical programs, Long Island’s congressional delegation must help permanently reverse these cuts and use their collective voices to stave off others not just in memory of the more than 10,000 Long Islanders killed by opioids in the last two decades, but on behalf of their families, those still struggling, and an entire generation of kids impacted by one of our nation’s worst public health crises.

Now that we’re finally making progress, we can’t go back.

This guest essay reflects the views of Jeffrey L. Reynolds, president and chief executive of Family and Children’s Association in Garden City.