Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer
State and county public health departments and non-profit groups are in uproar after Trump announced roughly $11.4 billion in COVID-era funding for grants linked to addiction, mental health, and other programs will be revoked and given to the wealthy in tax cuts. Keith Humphreys, an addiction policy researcher at Stanford University said, “This is chopping things off in the middle, while people are doing the work.” Humphrey also said that this could trigger intense layoffs and treatment disruptions.
The federal grant funding has been scheduled to run through September 2025. A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that it made sense to freeze the program immediately. This spokesperson went on to say, “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the statement said, adding that the Trump administration will refocus funding on America’s “chronic disease epidemic.” Drug overdoses linked to fentanyl and other substances have declined sharply due in part to a surge in funding for addiction treatment in the U.S. every year, according to the latest data from the CDC. Trump’s cuts in funding could be the beginning of another surge in overdoses, which he campaigned to lower during his run for president.
