The U.S. Senate is on board with a plan to more aggressively combat the opiod-addiction epidemic that has swept through the Appalachian region and other parts of the nation. Now, it's time for the U.S. House to do the same.
Senators on Thursday approved, by a 94-1 vote, the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act of 2016. The legislation includes money to train emergency workers to treat drug abusers, create treatment programs that would be alternatives to imprisonment and finance recovery programs at schools and nonprofit groups. There would be grants for helping veterans and pregnant offenders, and funds for using drugs like naloxone that can reverse opiate overdoses and for local law enforcement efforts.
It also would create an interagency task force to craft best practices for prescribing medications that contain opioids and grant federal officials the authority to make drug policy prevention-driven rather than punishment-focused. Both of West Virginia's senators - Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito - supported the act.
A stepped-up federal effort is certainly called for. More than 47,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2014, a rate that has more than doubled since 2000. And West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio have been among the hardest-hit by the wave of heroin- and prescription drug-related fatalities. In West Virginia, drug overdose deaths have soared by more than 700 percent between 1999 and 2013, and 600 West Virginians died last year of overdoses. Seventy of those deaths were in Cabell County, which has responded with a variety of initiatives, but more support from the federal government could go a long way toward making greater inroads against the problem.
One concern about the Senate endorsement remains, however, and that's whether Congress will follow through on funding.
Some have couched the bill's passage as an effort by the Republican-controlled Senate to show the American people that it can make progress on an important issue while otherwise the chamber is in a bitter divide over action on filling the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. But the measure provides no new money for grants, after Republicans last week rejected a Democratic effort to add $600 million in funding for the various initiatives. Senate Democrats and the White House argued that the measure would be significantly weakened without that money. Republicans countered that previously approved money could be used and said more could be provided when Congress writes next year's spending bills, according to a report by The Associated Press. We trust Congress follows through on that; otherwise the only conclusion can be that passage of the bill was merely for show.
There's also still work to be done in the U.S. House. Similar legislation has 92 co-sponsors, mostly Democrats. The timetable for action on that bill is uncertain at this point. But we urge House representatives from the region's states - including all three Republicans representing West Virginia - to get busy persuading their colleagues to move this act forward.
People are dying every day from opioid overdoses. A stronger effort to reduce those fatalities, help addicts recover and prevent substance abuse can't come soon enough.