Demand Restoration of Essential Addiction and Mental Health Funding

Around midnight on January 13, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) sent grant terminations for as many as 2,800 grants, representing nearly $2 billion in funding. The abruptly canceled funding supported frontline providers of overdose prevention, comprehensive opioid treatment, addiction care for people experiencing homelessness, transition support services for adults leaving prison, HIV and hepatitis C prevention, naloxone distribution, workforce development programs, peer recovery services, and more. The Trump administration’s only justification for the cuts was that they no longer aligned with administration priorities. These devastating cuts, made without any input from agency staff and without any internal notice, represent a 25% reduction to the agency’s overall budget.

Cuts went into effect immediately, and grantees are barred from submitting reimbursement requests for expenses incurred after January 13th. Consequently, critical public health and harm reduction programs were immediately shut down overnight, and their valuable services will cease.

Cuts of this magnitude and across so many program areas will result in the immediate dismantling of our addiction recovery infrastructure across the US. Congress must immediately demand the reversal of these reckless, damaging funding reductions to essential public health services.

Issue brief and script courtesy of Defend Public Health.