“For far too many years, the overdose crisis has been unraveling the very social fabric of our nation and destroying American lives and livelihoods. Biden’s inaugural National Drug Control Strategy delivers on his Unity Agenda — a call to action to beat the overdose epidemic. It recognizes that this is not a red state issue or blue state issue. This is America’s issue,” Gupta said.
“The most important action we can take to save lives right now is to have naloxone in the hands of everyone who needs it without fear or judgment, especially today, when 3 out of every 4 overdose deaths are happening from opioids,” Gupta said, adding that harm reduction efforts have bipartisan support.
Gupta told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “At This Hour” on Thursday that existing harm reduction policies are “failing people.”
“We’re failing to meet them where they are and every one of those overdoses, from an opioids perspective, is reversible. But today, we have so many inconsistent policies, barriers, when you are overdosing. Your zip code defines whether you live or die and that should just not happen,” he said.
Asked how much time he’ll give himself to measure whether the strategy is successful, Gupta emphasized the urgency of the moment, telling Bolduan, “I think every single minute is important, whether we’re successful or not, because an American is perishing every five minutes.”
“President Biden has made sure that this is an urgent priority, and we need to act with a sense of urgency because this is not a matter of days, weeks or years. It’s a matter of every minute when we lose Americans,” he continued.
Gupta on Wednesday said that with the President’s strategy, the US “will double treatment admissions for populations most at risk of overdose deaths and ensure universal access to medications for opioid use disorder by 2025.”
When asked how the federal government will work to expand access to treatment, a senior administration official said, “Low threshold or low barrier treatment will be the key to expanding access to treatment, especially in settings where we know people are at high risk.”
“We have to hit the drug traffickers where it hurts them the most, and that’s their wallet. Through this strategy, we will work to more than triple the number of drug traffickers sanctioned and increase our border security,” he said.
The drug czar also underscored the need to increase data collection related to drug policy.
“For example, we know that one of the best predictors of a fatal overdose is a prior nonfatal overdose, but we do not have a consistent and timely measure of nonfatal overdoses across the United States,” Gupta said, adding that limits agencies’ abilities to identify emerging trends and effectively target aspects of the drug supply chain.
CNN’s Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.