Capito urges reconsideration of funding cuts to ONDCP

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is urging the Trump Administration to reconsider any funding cuts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) as the nation, especially West Virginia, grapples with a devastating opioid epidemic.

Capito cited press reports that the administration intends to recommend a 95 percent cut to the ONDCP.

In a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, Capito said a realistic budget that demonstrates the administration’s commitment to combatting drug addiction is necessary.

“If cuts to the ONDCP, including the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas and Drug Free Communities programs, are proposed in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2018 Budget then I will lead a bipartisan group of my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee and in the Senate to reject those proposed cuts,” Capito wrote.

Capito serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. She has worked with ONDCP, including its HIDTA and Drug Free Communities programs.

The HIDTA program provides resources to law enforcement, including local police, state officials and federal agencies, to facilitate a regional approach to combatting drug trafficking. Of West Virginia’s 55 counties, 20 are part of the HIDTA program.

“Additional counties in my state and across the country continue to seek HIDTA designations, demonstrating that there is still unmet need for the program’s resources,” Capito said.

The Drug-Free Communities Support Program, a federal grant program providing funding to community-based coalitions that organize to prevent youth substance use, has targeted its prevention efforts to some of the hardest hit regions of West Virginia.

Last fall, eight grantees in West Virginia from the Eastern and Northern Panhandles to the southern coalfields received funding to support community specific efforts to combat the drug epidemic.

Program recipients have included Ripley, Wheeling, Weirton, Berkeley Springs, Gilbert, Charleston, Institute, Putnam County and Huntington.

“Our nation is in the grips of an opioid epidemic that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is claiming 91 lives per day,” Capito wrote.

“The CDC found that in 2015 my state of West Virginia had the highest opioid overdose death rate in the nation. Given the national scale of this drug epidemic, the ONDCP’s role in coordinating federal efforts to help combat drug abuse and addiction has never been more important.”