{"id":88003,"date":"2017-05-18T09:01:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T14:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=88003"},"modified":"2017-05-18T09:01:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T14:01:25","slug":"faster-opioid-program-funding-sought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2017\/05\/18\/faster-opioid-program-funding-sought\/","title":{"rendered":"Faster opioid program funding sought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted information<\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) urging the agency to speed up the distribution of federal funding for the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Grant Program, which provides funding to police departments to train first-responders as they deal with opioid related incidents. The program was created as part of the\u00a0Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act\u00a0(CARA),\u00a0which Brown supported.<\/p>\n

\"By
Sherrod Brown<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brown\u2019s letter follows an\u00a0Ohio police officer\u2019s accidental overdose\u00a0after coming into contact with the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl in the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeeping our police officers safe and unharmed is a top priority for Congress, as we know it is for the Department of Justice.\u00a0 As threats to our officers\u2019 safety evolve, so must our responsibility to guard against those threats.\u00a0 Congress, through creating the COAG program, has recognized the necessity of providing funding to our local law enforcement teams who are confronting the opioid crisis.\u00a0 We strongly urge your office to move as swiftly as possible in making sure that this funding gets to the communities that need it most in Ohio and across the country,\u201d\u00a0Brown wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Brown\u00a0announced more than $160 million in federal resources\u00a0to combat the opioid crisis in states like Ohio that have been hardest hit by the epidemic as part of the government funding package agreed to in April.<\/p>\n

In April, Brown announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)\u00a0released $26 million in grant funding\u00a0to Ohio to bolster efforts to combat the opioid epidemic after he joined Senate colleagues\u00a0in a letter to President Trump\u00a0calling for the release of critical resources that have been designated to address the nation\u2019s opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n

Brown\u00a0urged\u00a0Governor George \u201cSonny\u201d Perdue, President Trump\u2019s nominee to serve as the Secretary of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to continue USDA\u2019s efforts to fight the opioid epidemic in Ohio communities. USDA has helped in the fight against opioids through its Rural Development grant programs, like the Community Facilities Program — which helps rural communities expand local resources like medical facilities and public safety services. Brown also supported a strong Rural Development title in the 2014 Farm Bill to provide economic support to rural communities.<\/p>\n

Brown also worked with Senators Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) to introduce bipartisan\u00a0legislation<\/a>\u00a0to help U.S. Customs and Border Protection\u2019s (CBP) keep the deadly synthetic opioid, fentanyl, out of the country. Brown\u2019s bill, the\u00a0 INTERDICT Act, would provide CBP with additional high-tech screening equipment and lab resources to detect fentanyl before it enters the U.S.<\/p>\n

According to a report from the Ohio Department of Health, fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Ohio\u00a0more than doubled from 503 in 2014 to 1,155 in 2015. Several state and national law enforcement organizations have\u00a0endorsed Brown\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n

Last Congress, Brown introduced legislation that would address the opioid epidemic from prevention to recovery, filling in gaps that would help boost prevention, improve tools for crisis response for those who fall through the cracks, expand access to treatment, and provide support for lifelong recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submitted information WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) wrote to the Department of Justice (DOJ) urging the agency to speed up the distribution of federal funding for the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Grant Program, which provides funding to police departments to train first-responders as they deal with opioid related incidents. The program was created […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 11:05:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}