By Dan Goldberg and Brianna Ehley Sat, November 28, 2020, 7:00 AM EST·7 min read
President-elect Joe Biden, long viewed as a drug policy hawk during his four decades in the Senate, is signaling a different approach to confronting a still-raging drug addiction epidemic made worse by the pandemic.
Biden, who has stocked his team with addiction experts with extensive backgrounds in public health, will emphasize new funding for substance abuse treatment and prevention, while calling to eliminate jail time for drug use. It’s a departure from his tough-on-crime approach as a senator — and from President Donald Trump’s frequent focus on a law enforcement response to the drug crisis, which experts said undercut necessary public health measures.
"We have every reason to believe President-elect Biden will view this primarily as a public health issue,” said Michael Botticelli, who led the White House drug policy office under President Barack Obama. “They recognize there is a critical component law enforcement has to play but leading with a public health strategy.”
Biden will take office at a crucial moment in the fight against drug addiction. Some states are contending with double-digit spikes in overdose deaths, sparse public health workforces are already stretched thin fighting the coronavirus and widening budget deficits brought on by the pandemic could force states to make painful cutbacks to public services.
More than 76,000 people died of a drug overdose between April 2019 and April 2020, according to the most recent preliminary federal data, the most ever recorded during a 12-month period. Federal health officials say the drug crisis has only been amplified by months of social isolation, high unemployment and the diversion of resources to combat the virus.
“Since the pandemic hit we have not been able to control the opioid epidemic,” said Nora Volkow, the long-serving director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in an interview. “Our vulnerabilities have just gotten worse.”
Biden, who often spoke during the campaign about his son Hunter’s struggles with substance abuse, has called for record investments in drug prevention and treatment while also holding drug companies accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic. But his $125 billion treatment plan could face resistance in a bitterly divided Congress that for months has failed to agree on a coronavirus relief package, even as infections soar and jobless claims rise.
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