Editorial: Now is not the time to cut drug war funding

Significant federal funding cuts proposed to the Office of National Drug Control Policy would undercut ongoing efforts here in southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia to combat the region’s opioid epidemic. And that could mean fewer resources locally to fight the ever-growing drug addiction problem.

Area lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., are urging the Trump administration to reconsider any funding cuts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. However, the White House budget released last week proposes cutting the federal agency from $388 million a year to $24 million.

In a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, Capito is advocating a realistic budget that demonstrates the administration’s commitment to combating drug addiction in West Virginia and elsewhere.

“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 in the letter.

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

Mercer County Commissioner Greg Puckett, who serves on a national Opioid Task Force with the National Association of Counties, also is concerned about the proposed funding cuts. He correctly argues that cutting funding to programs that are trying to help people with recovery as well as prevention is not the right course to take.

“Since 1999, the drug epidemic in this country has quadrupled,” Puckett said. “In West Virginia, a state that has disproportionately been targeted by large pharmaceutical manufacturers, and struggling with continued economic hardships, we have seen this epidemic kill individuals, families and, in some cases, entire communities.”

We agree. And while there is certainly plenty of fat to cut when it comes to the federal government, this is one area that shouldn’t be targeted. Instead, we need all of the help we can get — both on the federal and state level — in fighting this deadly scourge.

West Virginia is a state that has the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate. Adding to these woes is the fact that the number of overdose deaths last year in the Mountain State increased by nearly 18 percent.

We risk losing an entire generation to drug abuse if we can’t overcome this deadly epidemic. Now is simply not the time to cut federal funding and programs that are key to winning the war against drug abuse.