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A $56 million grant to train emergency responders and supply them with the overdose reversal spray, plus other programs that address addiction, could be eliminated.
The opioid overdose reversal medication commercially known as Narcan saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year and is routinely praised by public health experts for contributing to the continuing drop in opioid-related deaths. But the Trump administration plans to terminate a $56 million annual grant program that distributes doses and trains emergency responders in communities across the country to administer them, according to a draft budget proposal.
In the document, which outlines details of the drastic reorganization and shrinking planned for the Department of Health and Human Services, the grant is among many addiction prevention and treatment programs to be zeroed out.
States and local governments have other resources for obtaining doses of Narcan, which is also known by its generic name, naloxone. One of the main sources, a program of block grants for states to use to pay for various measures to combat opioid addiction, does not appear to have been cut.
But addiction specialists are worried about the symbolic as well as practical implications of shutting down a federal grant designated specifically for naloxone training and distribution.
“Reducing the funding for naloxone and overdose prevention sends the message that we would rather people who use drugs die than get the support they need and deserve,” said Dr. Melody Glenn, an addiction medicine physician and assistant professor at the University of Arizona, who monitors such programs along the state’s southern border.