Ongoing federal budget cuts for drug treatment undermine the White House’s public statements on tariffs supposedly related to fentanyl — this is as the administration is slashing nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, the largest source of addiction treatment in the United States.
President Trump has framed his import charges as necessary to protect Americans from dangerous drugs. If that were not enough to illustrate his mendacity, drug-related research has already been reduced by nearly $600 million, and addiction and overdose prevention services gutted by at least $345 million.
A mass firing in October dramatically reduced the work force at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. The agency was already struggling from the loss of roughly a third of its workers in the spring. The cuts are blocking the distribution of millions of congressionally approved dollars in grants for community health clinics, as well as $1.7 billion in grants to state health departments from coast to coast. SAMHSA also provides — or, more accurately, provided — school-based programs to address mental health and youth suicide. According to observers, of the roughly 900 SAMSHA staff in January, less than half remain, including just five of the agency’s 17 most senior leaders.
Tariffs are not the only area in which the Trump administration has disingenuously cited illegal drugs as an excuse for disturbing acts. Over the past several months, the White House has directed the U.S. military to destroy speedboats in the Caribbean, alleging that they were involved in smuggling. Moreover, it has described drug importation as the work of foreign terrorists, therefore claiming emergency powers to go around constitutional restrictions on the use of force and deploying the military for domestic police work.
So far, there have been at least 13 strikes, killing a known 57 individuals in the Caribbean and in the eastern Pacific. These have been widely described as murders, in the absence of any proof that the boats’ occupants were drug couriers — and certainly not an imminent military threat. Whether or not one agrees with the Trump administration that drug importation is a national security threat, it is inarguable that it has abandoned millions of Americans in urgent need of addiction and mental health assistance.