Progress on overdose deaths could be jeopardized by federal cuts, critics say
The Trump administration has made deep cuts to the main federal agency focused on fighting opioid addiction, potentially jeopardizing the nation’s recent progress on reducing overdose deaths, some public health officials and providers say.
Created in 1992, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, known as SAMHSA, hands out billions in grants for mental health and addiction services. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, had a budget of about $7.5 billion last year.
Since January, the Trump administration has reduced the agency’s staff by more than half, scrapped $1.7 billion in block grants for state health departments and eliminated roughly $350 million in addiction and overdose prevention funding, according to a recent analysis by STAT, a health news website. The agency is currently without an administrator and is missing 12 of its 17 senior leaders.
Dr. Yngvild Olsen, the former director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at SAMHSA, said almost all of SAMHSA’s substance misuse funding flows to state and local health departments, nonprofits and behavioral health providers on the front lines of the fight against addiction. She noted that the agency has worked with state and local partners to make sure naloxone, the overdose-reversal medication, is “in the hands of every person who needs it.”
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/11/30/repub/progress-on-overdose-deaths-could-be-jeopardized-by-federal-cuts-critics-say/