BACKGROUND PRESS CALL
BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS
FOR AN UPDATE ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S INITIATIVE TO
STOP OPIOID ABUSE AND REDUCE DRUG SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Via Teleconference
10:34 A.M. EDT
MR. DEERE: Thank you, operator. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's call for an update on the President's initiative to stop opioid abuse and reduce drug supply and demand.
Here with us today to conduct the briefing is Senior Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, and Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, Katie Talento.
Ground rules, before we get started: Please note that opening remarks from Kellyanne Conway are on the record. The question-and-answer portion following those remarks is considered on background and attributable to a senior administration official. The call is embargoed until its conclusion.
With that, I will turn it over to Kellyanne.
MS. CONWAY: Thank you very much, Judd. And good morning to everyone. We really appreciate your interest on this legacy issue for the President and the Trump administration.
One year ago today, President Trump, First Lady Mrs. Melania Trump, and members of the Cabinet and others within the administration traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire, to launch the initiative to stop opioid abuse and reduce drug demand.
The President, at that time, called on every department and agency to execute the policy and really said that we have a whole-of-government approach to treat the whole person. And we'll also have what I call a "vertical governmental approach" which is federal, state, and local so that we are not supplanting our own judgment for those that are people closest to the people in the need at home, but that the federal government and the Trump administration would like to better resource and better tackle what we call, at the White House, the "crisis next door."
I'm going to spend less than a minute on the negatives. And because we've all seen the harrowing statistics, I'd like to focus most of my comments today on the progress that's being made and what we see as needing to tackle this going forward into the future.
The drug demand and opioid crisis is clearly one of the most harrowing public health challenges of our time -- really, any time. This crisis did not happen overnight, and we, at the White House, also acknowledge that it will be not solved overnight.
You are now more likely to die of a drug overdose in this country than in a car accident. Over 72,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses in 2017 alone.
Due in part to the opioid and drug crisis, life expectancy declined for the third straight year -- something not seen in this nation in 100 years.
Opioid-involved overdose deaths had more than doubled from 2007 to 2017. And the annual growth in deaths doubled in 2016 -- right before we got here -- alone.
In 2015, the total cost of the opioid epidemic was over $500 billion, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.
So the whole-of-government approach through this initiative over the last year has really focused on three key areas: prevention and education; interdiction and law enforcement; entry into recovery. I'd like to go through each of those separately and tell you the progress that we've made.
So the idea of prevention and education is to educate youth and young adults to prevent future generations from following prey to opioid addiction. One way this has happened is that the White House has launched a mass media campaign to educate 18- to 24-year olds, primarily, with a halo audience of 15- to 30-year olds about the dangers of opioid abuse. We've reached 58 percent of them with over 1.4 billion views through all of the ads combined.
We, of course, worked in some of those efforts with the Truth Initiative, which has tried to completely cease youth smoking, And the Ad Council, of course, has been around for over 75 years: "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk." Smokey the Bear: "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste." And now helping us to get the message out about opioid and drug awareness.
First Lady Melania Trump brought awareness to the impact of this crisis and its effects predominately on youth, children, given the fact that the federal government has starts capturing data on opioid use at age 12 in this nation because we must, because there's a market for that, sadly.
The First Lady has also shined a light on the NAS babies -- neonatal abstinence syndrome. And of course, the CRIB Act, through the legislation passed last year, is allowing Medicaid to cover healthcare services in pediatric recovery centers for infant suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome and allows state Medicaid programs to cover counseling and other services to the mothers of the babies born chemically dependent if those services are otherwise covered under the state program.
This has been a huge leap forward in keeping the newborn and his or her mother together. The mother is already wracked with stigma and guilt, and to keep them apart is not good for the mother and it certainly isn't good for the newborn.
So that piece of legislation and the First Lady bringing attention to the overall growing crisis of neonatal abstinence syndrome has really made a difference. Roughly 1 in 100 babies born in this country every day are born already chemically dependent, and that approximates about 150 a day. In some counties, it's closer to 1 in 10 or 1 in 7 (inaudible).
In addition, on the prevention education prong, we launched a Safe Prescribing initiative to cut nationwide opioid prescriptions. The goal was to cut them by one-third within three years. Over the first year of doing that, we've already seen prescribing levels falls over 25 percent. Part of this is better education for those who are prescribing, and part of this is better education for the patient. A patient knows his or her right to receive temporary painkillers, but temporary relief also means the right to refuse it or to just take what they need and then to bring the rest somewhere where it can be safely disposed.
In President Trump's first year in office, overdose deaths grew by 10 percent, having grown by 22 percent the year before. So the rate of death increased at a rate less than half of what had increased just the year before.
n the President's first year in office, 107,000 fewer teens started misusing prescription painkillers. In 2017, 1.4 million fewer Americans misused …4 million fewer* Americans misused opioids than in 2015. In the President’s first two years, the Department of Veterans Affairs reduced the number of veterans on opioids by 26 percent and over 100,000 veterans. Over 60 percent fewer Americans over age 26 started using heroin under President Trump’s first year in office. And, in 2017, there has been a 2.6 decrease -- since 2017, a 2.6 decrease in overdose deaths since they peaked in that year.
In some of the key states, where you see the crisis ravaging the population -- New Hampshire drug overdose deaths are down 6.3 percent. In West Virginia, they’re down 9 percent. Iowa, down 13 percent. Pennsylvania, down 17.6 percent. Ohio, down 20.7 percent -- per HHS, in the last the 12-month reporting period.
I think, also, when we talk about education and prevention, one of the most productive metrics that I would like to report to you is that, under this President’s leadership, the Take Back Days have been historically successful. They’ve existed for about eight and a half years. And our DEA administers them every last Saturday in April and every last Saturday in October each year.
But we also have started this initiative where we want every day to be Take Back Day. So if you have unused, unneeded, expired pills, you don’t need to wait until the last Saturday in April and October to dispose of those pills safely and legally. You can bring them to one of the many bins that some of the (inaudible) community pharmacists, for example, have donated. Our own National Safety Council provides envelopes for free and postage for free. If you would like to dispose of your unused and expired unused drugs, you can do that; put them in the envelope and mail them.
You can also -- there’s something called "DisposeRx" through Walmart, where you put the unused pills into the potion. It dissolves them safely. We’re trying to also inform people that you don’t want to flush them, you don’t want to throw them in the trash because it damages the water supply and, worse, in the trash, it’s directly accessed by sometimes pets and young children who don’t know any better. And there has been an increase in poisoning among both.
So the Take Back Day, and our initiatives that make every day Take Back Day, has shattered records every single time. And we’ve pulled 3.7 million pounds of pills back. That is the weight of 14 Boeing 757s, with room left over. And so it’s a pretty remarkable number, one of the most important that we can possibly report to you, because it also says that your role in the media, our role at the White House, everybody coming together can just inform Americans that Take Back Day is happening or you can bring your unused pills to the following locations.
Google has been very helpful to us in creating a locator map. ONDCP has created a fantastic heat map about the incidence of drug use and overdoses and the like. And the tech companies have been very helpful to us in supporting our efforts and finding ways to innovate and create safe passageways for folks to access information and indeed return unused drugs.
I’ll move on to one of the second prongs, which of course is cutting off the flow of illicit drugs across our borders, at our ports of entry, and within our communities. So reducing the supply of illicit drugs certainly begins with Take Back Day, but it includes so much of the law enforcement seizures. The amount of fentanyl seized by Customs and Border Patrol agents in 2018, between ports of entry along the southwest border totaled enough to kill more than 91 million Americans.
So we know fentanyl -- for all the positive, early, leading numbers on breaking the back of the opioid and drug demand crisis -- fentanyl, as the CDC tells us, is really the reason why these deaths continue because it is an ultra-lethal, instant killer for many who inject it. Some are seeking it out for a better high. Many are being accidentally poisoned by fentanyl, which -- just trace amounts, if you look at my Twitter feed -- but certainly, more importantly, if you look at -- the White House put out the picture of the penny last week, and next to the actual-size penny were just trace -- one lethal dose of fentanyl.
So, truly, trace amounts -- grains of salt, if you think about it -- are enough to kill people. People are unwittingly ingesting it. It’s laced into heroin, marijuana, meth, cocaine, and it’s also just being distributed by itself.
But the amount of fentanyl in fiscal year 2018, between ports of entry -- not at ports of entry -- along the southwest border alone, because I do hear and see lots of reports that only talk about the ports of entry. This is according to CBP and DHS. DEA’s annual increase alone in fentanyl seizures was enough to kill 350 million Americans. ICE, which some would abolish, is actually saving our lives. They seized enough fentanyl to kill every single American life, because you’re talking about trace amounts.
Beginning last October, all new K9 units are being trained to detect fentanyl. That’s actually a big step forward. Thanks to the STOP Act, which is also a part of the H.R.6 -- the law that was signed by the President last October and passed with every single Democratic vote, including every single Democrat running for President in 2020 or thought to be running for President in 2020. They all agreed that we have a serious crisis, and that each of these components made it into that broad, comprehensive piece of legislation.
One of it was the STOP Act. And the STOP Act required our own U.S. Postal Service to share with Customs and Border Protection advanced electronic data on 100 percent of packages entering the U.S. from foreign countries. This helps identify the suspicious shipments to stop deadly fentanyl from entering the country, certainly from China but increasingly Mexico and a couple of other (inaudible).
So over 50 percent of all international packages are being scanned now through the STOP Act, and CBP has stopped over six times more packages containing the fentanyl from our mail.
The upshot there, ladies and gentlemen, is twofold. One is what happens when Washington can work in a bipartisan fashion to really try to break the back of what is clearly an epidemic roiling every nook and cranny of our nation. Number two, it shows you how -- that the sheer supply and the flouting of the law (inaudible) loopholes and the law (inaudible) them and you just start to take action in a positive way, then you see results almost immediately. And we’re seeing that, with respect to the STOP Act.
The President and his administration are helping to stabilize now by expanding access to treatment and recovery. So 300,000 more Americans receive substance-use treatment relative to 2016 in the President’s first year in office. In 2017, 30,000 more young adults, aged 18-25 received outpatient treatment than in 2016.
The U.S. Surgeon General issued a very important advisory -- the first advisory by a U.S. Surgeon General in 13 years. And he did that last year. Dr. Jerome Adams was calling on everyday Americans to have access to and to learn how to administer naloxone, which is an overdose-reversing drug.
Because of his advisory and because of the increased funding for state and local responders, under this President’s leadership, 534 percent more overdose-reversing naloxone has been dispensed since the President took office. DOJ increased the number of drug courts in its funding by nearly 60 percent. We had a record number of Drug-Free Community grant recipients this past year, and a record amount of money going to the -- a record number -- of Drug-Free Community recipients from all across the country, really getting that money into the communities.
Also included in the H.R.6 -- that bipartisan legislation -- the IMD CARE Act. This is huge because it supports victims in the opioid crisis by removing a decades-old barrier to care by allowing state Medicaid programs to provide treatment at an institute for (inaudible) for Medicaid patients with substance-use disorder for up to 30 days.
This is huge because, before, the ban disallowed you from filling that 17th bed. So we had this cruel irony of empty beds and long waiting lists for treatments. And now, through this legislation, we’re allowed to -- those folks can go into what were, for years, mental institutions. And that’s why you had the ban, because people were being institutionalized for decades at a time and still getting Medicaid reimbursement, which was an incentive to keep people there, for some. So this is really huge.
We’re also working to end the cycle of recidivism for inmates by screening every inmate for addiction and connecting those in need with evidence-based treatment while they are serving. And along with our criminal justice reform actions in this administration, we’re working very closely together where an individual, male or female, is eligible for release. They sometimes also still need to be in treatment or need to re-assimilate into housing; or skilling, re-skilling education; or, of course, employment opportunities. So we’re trying to help with that as well.
To that end, the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration awarded more than $42 million to nine states and the Cherokee Nation to help people affected by opioid addiction rejoin the workforce. With so many available jobs, and so many folks successfully going through treatment or a drug court program, we don’t want to end it there. We do not believe that treatment stops in the doctor's office or at the (inaudible). We believe it must continue so that people can access housing, education, and certainly employment opportunities. So we work with HUD and Labor just as much as we work with DHS, and Customs and Border Patrol, and DOJ -- and the State Department has been very helpful.
So, to that end, I also just wanted to mention to you that the "Opioid Cabinet" continues in this administration, and I think it's one of the major reasons why we've been able to have this whole-of-government, successful approach where I coordinate it from the White House on behalf of the President but we push it out to the departments and agencies and then we bring it back in -- in regular engagements, weekly meetings, and phone calls -- because we know that the departments and agencies have a great deal of visibility, authority funding, and the ability just to touch the people in need.
So, USDA has done a fantastic job -- you may not anticipate that -- reaching out to rural America and giving them guidance and accessing them with information and resources, in addition to the ones I've mentioned. Obviously, we’re also working with HHS and NSC and CDC -- all of those components.
So also in H.R.6, I just wanted to highlight one or two other things because they are really are literally making a difference and it was a big, bipartisan piece of legislation. The other one I might just highlight for you is that there were funds in H.R.6 to empower community-driven responses to the state and local entities who are receiving the money from the federal government to prevent drug misuse, interdict illicit drugs, and treat addiction.
So the local communities -- the local government will figure out what their needs are. Some of them are seeing a rise in fentanyl. Some of them are seeing a need for -- to outfit, say, their fire stations to become safe stations -- places where folks who are overdosing, or driving somebody who is overdosing, or both, can come -- no questions asked, no prosecution -- and have that person get naloxone and warm hand-off to a health professional. So this is truly helping that as well.
There's much more, and I'm sure we can send out a paper on it. But what I would tell you, looking forward: We're going to continue to focus on implementing H.R.6, which was the single most comprehensive piece of legislation on any one drug crisis in our nation's history. And this is a great example not just of bipartisan cooperation, but also of a number of different -- you know, disparate but related bills being knitted together into one big package. And that allowed us to really tackle these three elements -- the law enforcement interdiction, the treatment and recovery, and certainly the prevention education -- all at once.
We're working very closely with governors and state attorneys general, with local law enforcement, with local health professionals, with grieving families, with survivors. And I think the key provision that are consistent with the administration's opioid agenda in H.R.6 include expanding comprehensive approach to recovery; clarifying the FDA regulatory process so that people can access a non-addictive alternative as well; and then expanding the public awareness, training and equipping first responders.
In the coming months, we'll continue to focus on these three prongs. But we will specifically focus on stopping the flood of fentanyl, heroin, meth, and cocaine that continues to flood across our borders, stopping Chinese fentanyl at its source. This is a commitment that President Trump secured from President Xi in the opening moments of their dinner at Buenos Aires in early -- December 1st, I believe, at the G20.
he President expects President Xi to keep his commitment. We know that fentanyl is being made almost exclusively -- but certainly mostly, almost exclusively in the Chinese labs, based our intelligence sources, and that Chinese fentanyl is making it into our communities. And it's just a lethal poison.
We're also working with the Department of Justice and the Congress to pass additional legislation to update the penalties for those who profit from peddling low-volume, high-potency poisons, such as fentanyl and its analogues.
o if you look at that actual-size penny on my Twitter feed from last week, or on the White House website or Twitter feed, you'll see right away that -- when you look at that tiny, tiny trace, lethal amount of fentanyl, you see right away that you'd have to -- what? -- get like 20,000 doses like that to trigger some of the mandatory minimums
So whereas the FIRST STEP Act and Second Chance criminal justice reform act was meant to stop over penalizing, over punishing, trapping people after they've paid their dues, this actually would acknowledge that some people are being under penalized, under punished, under prosecuted for peddling low-volume, high-potency poisons. These drugs -- these high-level drug traffickers -- the Department of Justice last year indicted two Chinese nationals -- of all the places, in North Dakota and Mississippi -- and that really started law enforcement down the path of trying to interdict and show real teeth in the prosecutions and indictments. And so we will continue to do that as well.
So, with that, I will -- I guess I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Kate Talento, Special Assistant to the President and a brilliant mind on all things health policy and drug policy here at the White House.
And I should also tell you, in advance of the first anniversary, we will briefing the President and the First Lady, later on today, on our progress and what’s ahead.
Thank you.
MR. DEERE: We'll actually go ahead and open it up for questions, and we'll let the operator do that.
Q Hi, this is Mark Irons with EWTN. A year ago, in New Hampshire, the President advocated the use of the death penalty to get tough on drug dealers. Have prosecutors around the country been pursuing the death penalty for drug dealers in the past year? And does the President still think this is an effective way to address this issue?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you for raising that. As you know, the President, himself, has raised this many times since. And he just cannot understand how they get away with poisoning hundreds of thousands of people. And if you can draw a nexus between the drug trafficker and the deaths, that’s where you can evoke everything from the Kingpin Statute, which has been on the books for quite a while. DOJ at some point has said that they are -- some of them are pursuing the Kingpin Statute that’s a really rarely-used statute to effectuate this, because they have a President now who is demanding tougher penalties for these folks.
And as I just said, legislatively, there is an appetite, among many, to go ahead and enhance these penalties. I'm not talking about your neighbor; we're talking about these high-level, low-volume, because they know just how to stay underneath the amount that would trigger these mandatory minimums.
And so the President often talks about the death penalty as the ultimate punishment in foreign countries for drug trafficking such as this. He was briefed on those matters, he says. And he says it frequently and publicly as well, so you heard him. He certainly says it privately that he was briefed on these matters by other heads of state and other officials -- senior administration officials in other countries -- that they don’t have a drug problem, and in part because people see the ultimate punishment occurs.
So this is something the President absolutely wants to stiffen the penalty. He can't believe, he has said, you know, somebody will sit on death row for a long time for killing one person, which absolutely is a tragedy. We're a pro-life administration. Of course, it’s a tragedy that one life was extinguished. But, at the same time, how in the world is -- are so many high-level drug traffickers doing their bidding, killing mass amounts of people?
And we had, actually, we had received information from the Department of Justice, some examples of -- in one county, in Ohio, a high number of them -- a plurality were getting probation instead of any type of punishment. There were a couple of examples out of New York where one drug dealer spent like a year or three in prison. You just can't get that high-level.
So, I think that is definitely something that will continue to be pursued. And thank you for asking the question.
Q Hi, yeah. This is Alex (inaudible) with BGov. This is kind of specifically for Kellyanne. And I was going to ask, because you get -- I know you do the rounds on Capitol Hill. And I was curious: Does the administration have a dollar figure when we're talking about 2020 approps bills? They're going to want for specific programs -- the budget asked for a relatively modest increase, but I'm curious if, when they start doing appropriations, do you have a sense of what you want across the board? Do you have -- specifically for like ONDCP for (inaudible) -- do you guys have a sense for how much you need to fulfill the rest of this, to kind of see this through?
MSENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you very much for your question, Alex. Yes, so, if you look at budget, you'll see that, over the last couple of years, we have received more than $6 billion. And this year, the ask is increased by over a billion dollars. So the ask is for over $7 billion.
I will tell you, Jim Carroll, the Director of ONDCP, would have been on this call, but he's travelling in Kentucky with Leader McConnell and others. He's on the ground, as he often is, going around this country and helping people. But he just told me yesterday he will continue at ONDCP to work with HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Authority, which has done amazing work, and also the Drug-Free Communities, the drug courts. That’s all under his purview as well.
So the budget numbers reflect that and it reflects the reality that we are fighting a very intense drug crisis -- finding ways to mitigate it, and to help people. But, at the same time, the dollar figures are -- we (inaudible) to the urgency of the crisis. And you will see your administration try to reduce budgetary items here, try to raise them there. This is clearly one that, with the President's blessing, the ONDCP and our White House budget, our administration's budget, are asking for more money.
By the way, that's in addition to what is already allocated to things like the CARA Act -- CARA 2.0 -- or the Cures Act and these other grant-making programs that were part of H.R.6 -- and, really, some of them have existed previously and they are just being reauthorized or they're just continuing into the successive years. So this is in addition to things like that.
Even the Department of Justice, early in the Trump administration, had additional Back the Blue grants, and part of that was meant to go for opioid interception or interdiction and the like to support first responders' efforts in that regard.
So there are other pots of money apart from the budget number, but the budget number increased by over $1 billion.
Q This is Dan Vergano with Buzzfeed News. I'm wondering how the administration responds to the criticism we hear a lot that its opposition to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act works against efforts to get more people in the recovery in states like Ohio and so forth. That's what pays for all these new people getting treatment.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks for the question. I'll answer it two ways and then see if my colleague would like to jump in as well. So, I mentioned these already, but they go to the heart of your question -- this administration's legislation includes, for example, CRIB Act. And so that frees up Medicaid money that otherwise could not have been committed to cover the healthcare services in pediatric recovery centers for the infants suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome.
We do not have good longitudinal data on what happens to these boys and girls. Most of them survive, thank God, but as they get older, we are starting to see some longitudinal data, but we also will be looking at that.
But this allows -- the CRIB Act, as part of H.R.6, allows the state Medicaid programs to cover counseling and other services to the mothers. And that is new. And that is a very important part of repurposing the Medicaid dollars or listing those Medicaid dollars for this type of burgeoning crisis.
The second one I would mention again -- because it's significant but it's not necessarily within the ken of most things reporters are focused or covering anything like this every day because it's quite unique -- it's the IMD CARE Act. So, again, you have these exclusions. It's called 1115 IMD Exclusion. And, basically, we just have these decades-old barrier to care. And now, listing that by allowing Medicaid programs to provide treatment for opioid addiction in an institute for mental disease for Medicaid patients, that's huge because -- and it's up to a month a year. And that's huge because that did not exist.
If you were in a state, and most states still have the exclusions -- I think 17 states have successfully applied for and been granted a waiver, but most have not. And Secretary Azar and even a layperson like me and others were telling governors a year ago -- when they were here and we talked about this, and then they were just here last month and we talked to them about it again, a bipartisan group of them -- apply for your waiver. Get your state that waiver. You can fill more beds in those fully-functioning institutes for mental disease so that we can treat the Medicaid patients for substance-use disorder. So these are two specific examples -- new examples -- of freeing up Medicaid dollars and Medicaid authority to cover that.
Would you like to jump in (inaudible)?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure. I mean, one thing I want to mention is that Medicaid expansion is allowed at any state and all they have to do is apply. The Trump administration is not opposing any state's current law authority to expand if they want to -- expand Medicare. I'm sorry (inaudible).
One thing that my colleague alluded to is the increased flexibility at the Center for Medicaid and Medicare services -- Medicare and Medicaid services. The Administrator, Verma, put out a letter to all state Medicaid directors encouraging them to apply for these waivers that my colleague mentioned. And we've gotten a few waiver requests, but we are wondering where the rest are, honestly.
So, as my colleague mentioned, when the governors come in every year, we sort of harangue them to send us a waiver application so that we can help them conquer the opioid crisis in their states. And we encourage them to do that.
We also put out a letter from the Administrator to state Medicaid directors on neonatal abstinence syndrome, encouraging these innovative programs -- similar to Lily's Place in West Virginia -- to be expanded and for states to know that they can work in their Medicaid programs to get coverage for the baby, but also for services to the mom when appropriate in an integrated-care setting.
So that's really important, and so I would contend that we're working with Medicaid and using all the possible authorities that Congress has given us to combat this crisis through that program.
Q Hi, it's Darlene Superville at the Associated Press. I was wondering: After this very thorough rundown, when you go in this afternoon to brief the President, what is the takeaway that you have for him? What is the upshot of what you will tell him, in terms of what the administration is doing here?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you, Darlene. So they’re going to hear what you heard, and they're going to be given -- we'll also have a factsheet that I'm sure will be distributed publicly as well.
And the President -- you know, he's briefed on this regularly because it is absolutely a legacy issue for him. And when I say "legacy," I just -- by that, I mean something he really wants us to continue to work on; something he's tackled since the campaign trail and brought right into the early days of his administration.
And it is the one public policy issue that the President and First Lady work on together. And I know the First Lady herself, having raised a great deal of awareness about neonatal abstinence syndrome in traveling to different hospitals and centers around this country, Ohio and -- I think Ohio, several times, because they have a couple of hospitals there, and they're doing groundbreaking treatment and research on this issue. Also, to Lily's Place in West Virginia, and to Brigid's Path in Ohio, and she's been, you know, very recently on the West Coast.
I know she's expanding that reach, often now, into talking more about youth and teen -- teen use -- the dangers of illicit drug use. And I will say, sometimes you have to start at the beginning, where education is basically telling people, unlike -- I'm an old lady, so unlike the drug overdoses of my youth, the drug crisis of my youth in teen years, what I was witnessing as a member of society -- this is just so much more insidious sometimes because that tiny little bottle bears a label that has the family doctor and the local pharmacy on it. And so it's tricky. That was legally prescribed to help someone, somehow.
And even making sure youth know, even if Mom seems less in pain or Dad got through his surgery better when he stayed home from work for a few days, that this is not for you.
And what happens is that they graduate then to street drugs which increasingly relates to fentanyl. So some of it is starting at the beginning. If I can urge the press to do one thing, it really is to join us in just informing the public about the dangers, but also informing the public about the outlets they have for treatment and recovery; the fact that many of their local fire stations are now more likely to respond to a drug overdose than a fire. So they are more regularly equipped with the types of -- I'm using the word (inaudible), "treatment," you know, do the warm handoff to a health professional -- that there are additional treatment and recovery programs available, displaced worker grants available.
The Opportunity Zones and EnVision Centers at HUD are also tackling this front and center. We recognize, and we hear this from governors constantly, but we certainly just note that many of our unfilled jobs in this country could be filled, except people are failing the drug test. We're not going to loosen any requirements of a drug test for you to operate a machine, or the like.
But how can we help people? So we -- I had an opportunity to visit Belden -- B-E-L-D-E-N -- Industries last fall with Second Lady Karen Pence and Surgeon General Dr. Adams, and the Secretary of Labor Acosta. And we witnessed firsthand this innovative, nongovernment, private manufacturing. They manufacture fiber optic wires; maybe some of your TV outlets use it, in fact.
And Belden Industries has started a program where, if you fail a drug test, instead of kicking you out of that job -- which really is often your path to any type of -- and help to any type of recovery and long-term sustainability -- they let you stay in your job, but you have to immediately go into treatment. And they've worked together with a local hospital, local community college. And they've got some really good numbers. And they're not the only ones but they're an example I would give to you.
We also -- I couldn't tackle it here, but I'll remind the President today that we have -- we keep on having these commitments from corporate and from nonprofit America, where they are -- everybody from Amazon, to Walmart, to Walgreens, to some of the pharmaceutical companies, to other -- just many other actors have been here -- Facebook, the tech companies, Google -- they came with an offer. We can help you do this. We see what people are searching for long before it gets into the mainstream.
And so here is where -- here is where the questions are. Here is where the suffering is. Here are heat maps we can help you with. Here are the locators. And it's been really remarkable.
So I will -- this is very lengthy briefing today, and I know the President and First Lady will have a lot of questions also, because they get updated on this regularly. But this is a formal briefing.
One year on: Where are we? One year on: Where are the progress points? Where are the metrics where we can say, "Okay, this is actually working and we just have to keep at it, or we're implementing the H.R. 6 components"? And then where are the gaps? Where do we still need more attention, more resources, more work, if you will?
But I'm very proud to work for a President and with the First Lady and with an administration that really is trickling down on the efforts here.
Also, I'll be joined, certainly, by members of the Cabinet and other senior officials throughout the administration. So it will be a full briefing with different components.
Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, I think I would add that probably the key metrics, in my view, for the President to hear today will be the overdose deaths and new initiations on illicit and misuse of illicit prescription opioids. So those are sort of the key metrics that determine the future for this generation facing this crisis. And we have really good things to report on that front.
So if we didn't deliver results for this President on this crisis, we would have a lot to answer to him for. And I think we have really good -- a good story to tell but it's an incomplete story and we're not done. We've just gotten started.
Q Hi, thanks for taking the call. This is Brianna Ehley from Politico. I was just wondering -- another budget question. The President's budget proposed for the third year in a row to cut ONDCP's budget by about 95 percent, which obviously includes moving the HIDTA program and the Drug-Free Communities program to other agencies.
So I was wondering -- you know, traditionally, ONDCP is the office that coordinates the White House drug strategy, but it sounds like the White House -- your (inaudible) Cabinet is doing that specifically for the opioid crisis. So could talk about what ONDCP's role is in this?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yeah, thanks for the question. So I don't think that moving programs is the same as cutting programs. Next question.
MR. DEERE: So, operator, we'll conclude the call.
Just a reminder for those joining us today that Kellyanne's opening remarks were on the record. The Q&A portion with [senior administration officials] was on background, attributable to "senior administration officials." The call is embargoed until its conclusion and we thank everyone for joining.
END 11:19 A.M. EDT
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