Trump should spend $5 billion on the opioid epidemic, not the border wall | Opinion

The President is holding the federal government hostage for a $5 billion wall he claims will make us safer. He continues to push his false narrative that the southern border represents “a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.” Meanwhile many local leaders across this country, Republicans and Democrats, are forced to confront a real crisis, one that grows more deadly and urgent every day.

The President should drop his obsession with the wall and instead commit $5 billion to addressing an emergency he has already declared: the opioid epidemic.

I was sworn into my first public office two years ago, running the largest local government in Delaware. At the time, I heard countless stories of communities impacted by opioid addiction. Local experts then called it the public health crisis of our time.

It has only grown worse. In 2017, nearly 50,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The number of opioid deaths in the United States has more than quadrupled since 2002. In New Castle County, more of our residents died from opioid use in the first nine months of 2018 than in all of 2016.

And this epidemic stresses local services like never before. New Castle County first responders administered the lifesaving medication Narcan nearly 1,200 times in 2018, a 67 percent increase over 2016.

The good news is there are solutions.

Last year, the Office of National Drug Control Policy awarded a federal Combating Opioid Overdose grant to our police’s Hero Help initiative. The program diverts those struggling with addiction into long-term assistance in lieu of immediate arrests for lesser crimes. In 2018, Hero Help assisted hundreds facing opioid addiction. The program kept nearly all of these individuals out of prison and provided intensive case management to support their long-term recovery.

This innovative program provides pre-arrest criminal justice reform, reducing public safety and health expenditures while increasing access to meaningful assistance. Our criminal justice system too often fails to provide adequate treatment to those who need it.

Last month, the Liberty Mid-Atlantic High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area recognized the tremendous success of New Castle County’s Hero Help Program. They invited Hero Help to share our impressive outcomes at a national conference.

In an unexpected turn, days before the conference, the federal government notified us that there was not enough funding for Hero Help in 2019. They denied our $240,000 grant request.

We are collaborating with County Council and our state government to piece together funding to keep Hero Help afloat. In 2019, as our economy flourishes, we should not scale down innovative, lifesaving programs like Hero Help.

There are quality underfunded governmental and nongovernmental programs that could help hundreds of thousands of those facing chemical addiction across our country. Many of these programs would save money in the long run.

So the good news is there are incredible solutions to stem this epidemic, which has already grown beyond our worst nightmares.

The bad news is we do not have the resources to appropriately execute such solutions.

Fifteen months ago, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency. And then nothing changed.

Our first responders, public advocates, and medical professionals are working harder than everto address these incredible challenges.

These solutions need funding and leadership from Washington. New Castle County’s own Joe Biden said, “Don't tell me what you value; show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” For local leaders facing a true epidemic, an emergency declaration is meaningless without the real dollars to address it.

This goes beyond emergency declarations. It is about our values.

Matthew Meyer is the county executive of New Castle County, Delaware.