WASHINGTON — Last month, President Donald Trump announced a new executive order , that among other things, would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to steer federal funding away from “programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called ‘harm reduction’ or ‘safe consumption’ efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.”

A July 29 letter from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, referencing the president’s order, states that in recent years, overdose-reversing medications like naloxone have been “lumped into an ideological concept of harm reduction which has been used to advocate for policies that are incompatible with Federal laws and inconsistent with this Administration’s priorities.”

Billy O’Bryan

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