Trone Responds to CDC Data Showing Record-Breaking 29% Nationwide Spike in Overdose Deaths During COVID
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Hannah Muldavin, Hannah.Muldavin@mail.house.gov
Trone Responds to CDC Data Showing Record-Breaking 29% Nationwide Spike in Overdose Deaths During COVID
*Overdose Deaths Rose to the Highest Number Since 1990*
**Current Crisis Disproportionately Affecting Black Americans**
WASHINGTON — Today, Congressman David Trone (MD-06) made the below statement following the release of the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealing that over 87,000 Americans died from a drug overdose between September 2019 and September 2020.
“The numbers released by the CDC today should be a wake-up call for anyone who didn’t comprehend the dire state of our nation and the opioid crisis. On top of the 563,000 Americans we’ve already lost to COVID, these 87,000 Americans who died this year from an overdose did so without much attention or fanfare.
“There is no vaccine that can prevent addiction — a disease that these latest numbers show is disproportionately impacting Black Americans. Numbers this week from Maryland show that rural communities like ones I represent in Western Maryland are struggling greatly against the disease as well.
“I worked with the Biden Administration to help secure $4 billion dollars in the American Rescue Plan to address the mental health and addiction crises, but the data shows that we need a continuous flow of federal funding to help address this critical issue.
“It’s time we take sweeping action against this disease. It is killing our children. It is killing our friends. It is killing our partners. It is disproportionately killing Black Americans. As Elijah Cummings once said, ‘we are better than this’. We must be better than this.
“Hubert Humphrey talked about how the moral test of government is determined by how we treat those in the shadows. Those with substance use disorder have been hidden in the shadows, begging us to pay attention. It’s time we listen to them.”
Congressman David Trone was elected in 2018 to serve Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District, where his top priority in Congress is ending the opioid and addiction epidemic that has devastated the entire nation.
In 2016, Trone lost his nephew Ian to a fentanyl overdose after working closely with Ian for over five years while he was in and out of recovery. After extensive first-hand experience supporting a loved one with substance use disorder, Trone was able to understand the challenges and barriers for many to recovery.
In his first term in Congress, Trone founded the Freshmen Working Group on Addiction, a bipartisan group of 64 freshmen lawmakers dedicated to ending the addiction epidemic in the country, later merging the group to create the new Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force. Trone was also appointed to the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking by Speaker Pelosi.
Trone serves on the Appropriations, Veterans’ Affairs, and Joint Economic Committees in the 117th Congress and previously served on the Education and Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees.
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