Hillary Clinton unveils $10 billion plan to fight substance abuse

Hillary Clinton holds a roundtable discussion in Keene, N.H., in April. Clinton said talking to voters in New Hampshire and Iowa prompted her to take on substance abuse as part of her 2016 campaign platform. (Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

Hillary Clinton unveiled a $10 billion plan to combat alcohol and drug abuse Wednesday.

“It’s time we recognize that there are gaps in our health care system that allow too many to go without care — and invest in treatment,” the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in an op-ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader. “It’s time we recognize that our state and federal prisons, where 65 percent of inmates meet medical criteria for substance use disorders, are no substitute for proper treatment — and reform our criminal justice system.”

Clinton outlined the key goals of her proposed strategy, which include increased local drug prevention efforts for teens and expanded access to drug treatment for all addicts, including those charged with nonviolent or low-level drug offenses. The plan also aims to equip all first responders with naloxone, an already widely used emergency drug proven to stop potentially fatal overdoses, and to require training for health care providers to recognize signs of potential substance abuse disorders and to be more cautious about prescribing controlled substances.

States will be called on to craft individualized programs aimed at achieving these goals, and those that do will receive assistance from a new $7.5 billion federal fund, Clinton wrote. As part of this federal-state partnership, states would receive $4 million in federal funds for every $1 million spent on such programs over 10 years. Clinton also proposed a 25 percent increase in funding for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, which provides money and technical assistance for drug treatment and public health initiatives in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other Pacific territories.

Additional funding for the plan, Clinton’s campaign says, will come from money the criminal justice system will save by prioritizing “treatment over prison for low-level and nonviolent drug offenders, so we can end the era of mass incarceration.”

Shortly after launching her presidential campaign, Clinton announced that conversations with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire — who expressed concerns about recent overdoses and increased heroin and prescription drug use in their communities — had prompted her to take on substance abuse as an unexpected addition to her 2016 platform.

“There are 23 million Americans suffering from addiction. But no one is untouched,” Clinton wrote in her op-ed Wednesday. “Through improved treatment, prevention, and training, we can end this quiet epidemic once and for all.”

Clinton isn’t the only presidential hopeful attempting to tackle this complicated issue. Republican candidate Chris Christie released a new campaign ad Wednesday in which he explains that being “pro-life” applies not just to unborn babies, but also to “the 16-year-old drug addict who’s laying on the floor of the county jail.”

The New Jersey governor has signed a number of bills over the past year aimed at combatting heroin and prescription opioid abuse in his state, which, like New Hampshire, has been at the center of an alarming nationwide surge in overdose deaths.

“And so that’s why I so firmly believe that the way to really win the war on drugs is to treat the addict,” Christie says in the ad, which shows him speaking at a recent town hall meeting in Laconia, N.H. “Because I believe that every one of those lives is a precious gift from God, and it’s not up to us to decide when that life ends.”