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Senate Blocks $600 Million in Additional Funding for Bill Aimed at Combating Addiction


Overview

Originally Published: 03/03/2016

Post Date: 03/03/2016

by Join Together


Summary/Abstract

Addiction treatment and prevention funding once again take a back seat to foreign aid and America's addiction to war.

Content

Commentary:

The economic impact globally for the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds 14 trillion which is rougly 13% of the annual global GDP. The US daily cost is 11.5 million for the ISIS conflict alone and we provided 35 billion in foreign economic aid in 2014 and provide more annual aid to Pakistan than the Senate will appropriate for addiction treatment and prevention to save our kids. We acknowledge that there are geopolotical realities but also understand that we have to build 5 less F-35 planes (114 million each) of the 2,500 currently being built at a cost of 400 billion to begin to stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, we lose 47,000 citizens a year to drug overdoses and maintain the disticnctive honor of housing 25% of the worlds prison population of which over 65% meet the diagnostic criteria of a substance use disorder. We consume 88% of the opiods in the world and through the careful oversight of the FDA have legal cartels masquerading as pharmaceutical companies mass producing opioids that have gross revenues that rival those of the major Mexican cartels. In 2010, Purdue Pharma grossed 3.2 billion.   It gets better. A combination of crafty lobbying and American capitalistic ingenuity by our esteemed  sociopathic entrepreneurs have created a prison industrial complex cloaked in REIT tax shelters and an ineffective addiction treatment industry that grosses over 35 billion annually and boasts an inexcusable successful recovery rate of less than ten percent for opioid dependent people.

 

 Top Five

1. Israel: $3.1 billion

2. Egypt: $1.5 billion

3. Afghanistan: $1.1 billion

4. Jordan: $1 billion

5. Pakistan: $933 million

 

Senate Blocks $600 Million in Additional Funding for Bill Aimed at Combating Addiction

 

The Senate on Wednesday voted against an amendment to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) that would have added $600 million in funding. The bill would increase addiction treatment and prevention.

The amendment was sponsored by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a Democrat. Senate Democrats said they will not block the legislation over funding, The Washington Post reports.

Senate Republicans argue that there are potentially hundreds of millions available for CARA as part of the omnibus spending bill passed in late 2015, The Hill reports. Five Republicans voted along with Democrats on Wednesday for the additional funding for CARA.

The Act is sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a Democrat, and Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican. The bill has bipartisan support and would expand prescription drug take-back programs and establish monitoring to prevent over-prescribing of opioid painkillers. It would expand the availability of medication-assisted treatment, including in criminal justice settings, and would support treatment as an alternative to incarceration.

The measure also calls for training and equipping first responders on the use of the opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone.

CARA calls for spending as much as $80 million on treatment, prevention and recovery. It does not include actual funding, which would have to come through an appropriations bill.

The Obama Administration on Tuesday voiced concern over the lack of funding in the bill.

After the vote, Senator Shaheen said she will continue to fight fight “until we get the resources that families and communities need” to combat opioid abuse.

A final vote on the legislation could happen as early as this week, the newspaper notes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan. 31, 2016

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