This week, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts announced they are planning to introduce legislation that would require $10 billion a year in federal funding to combat the opioid crisis.
The program, similar to the Ryan White Act of 1990, which provided federal money to fight the AIDS epidemic, would send federal funding directly to local and state governments to provide treatment services.
Cummings said he and Warren got the idea for the Comprehensive Addiction Resource Emergency, or CARE, Act from Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana S. Wen and her staff, who pitched the lawmakers on the need for increased funding.
OSI staff briefed Cummings and his staff before a meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at Johns Hopkins University in December and last March Scott Nolen, director of OSI’s Addiction and Health Equity program, wrote an op-ed urging a more urgent response to the opioid epidemic.
