Biden-Harris Administration Actions to Address Overdose Epidemic | ONDCP

President Biden and Vice President Harris have made addressing the country’s overdose epidemic a top priority of this administration and a key pillar of the President’s Unity Agenda for the Nation. Under their leadership, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken more historic action and made more unprecedented investments than ever before to tackle this epidemic and save lives.

When President Biden and Vice President Harris took office in January 2021, overdose deaths were up 31% year-over-year. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that overdose deaths had decreased by 3% over the past year. This is the first decline in overdose deaths in more than five years.

Monthly preliminary data from the CDC shows overdose deaths continue to decline. The latest preliminary data from the CDC released this month shows a 7.5% decrease in overdose deaths for the 12 months through March 2024. This is the largest decline ever and the fourth consecutive month of reported declines in the projected total number of overdose deaths over a 12-month period.

Historic actions to strengthen public health

At the direction of President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Biden-Harris administration has removed decades-old barriers to treatment for substance use disorders and expanded access to life-saving overdose medications to address the overdose epidemic and save lives.

Historic measures taken by the Biden-Harris administration to expand access to treatment include:

• The number of healthcare providers allowed to prescribe medication for opioid addiction will be expanded from 129,000 to 1.8 million by abolishing the X-Waiver.
• Updating federal regulations for opioid treatment programs for the first time in more than two decades. This historic update included:
  • Creating permanent flexibilities in the COVID-19 era that expand eligibility for patients to receive take-home doses of methadone. This will help reduce the burden of transportation for frequent clinic visits. Research has shown that patients who receive take-home doses are more likely to stay in treatment and less likely to use illicit opioids.
  • Enabling treatment initiation via telehealth, including methadone via audiovisual telehealth technology and buprenorphine via audio technology only, to remove transportation barriers.
  • Expanding eligibility requirements for health care providers to allow nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe medications through OTPs where state law allows. This will ease the burden on OTP operations and increase patient access to medications.
  • Breaking down barriers to access to treatment by removing the strict eligibility criteria that previously required patients to have a full year of addiction history before they were eligible for treatment. This will help open more doors to treatment for more people when they need it and ensure that everyone can get the care they need.
  • Expanding access to transitional treatments, so that patients can start drug treatment while waiting for further care, ensures people can access care when they are ready and reduces the barriers of waiting lists for treatment.
• Lifting a 17-year moratorium on mobile methadone vans, increasing access to this FDA-approved drug, especially in rural areas and areas where access to treatment is limited.

• Allowing state funds earmarked for addressing opioid crimes to be used for substance abuse treatment and prisoner services.
• Allow states to use Medicaid funds to provide health care services, including treatment for people with substance use disorders, to individuals in prisons.

Historic measures taken by the Biden-Harris administration to expand access to overdose prevention medications include:

• For the first time, overdose prevention drugs are available without a prescription. These life-saving medications are now available in supermarkets and pharmacies.
• Historic amounts of money are being invested in the State Opioid Response and Tribal Opioid Response programs, which have delivered nearly 10 million opioid overdose response kits.
• U.S. drugmakers that offer FDA-approved overdose prevention drugs are meeting to discuss ways to improve access and affordability to save more lives.
• The launch of the Real Deal on Fentanyl campaign to educate youth about the dangers of fentanyl and the life-saving effects of naloxone, in partnership with the Ad Council, along with a Spanish-language companion site.
• Harm reduction organizations should make it easier for them to obtain naloxone directly from manufacturers and distributors, while increasing public access to this important medicine.
• Support states with extensive technical assistance, policy academies, and meetings to ensure that existing state opioid response funds are used to provide naloxone to high-impact communities.
• Providing funding directly to states so they can purchase naloxone.
• An additional $459 million was called for for harm reduction services such as naloxone in the President’s fiscal year 2025 budget request.
• Launch of the White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose, which calls on stakeholders across sectors to save lives by improving training and access to life-saving opioid overdose medications.

Historic measures to tackle illegal drug trafficking

The Biden-Harris administration has also made tackling the global illicit drug trade and holding drug traffickers accountable a key priority in efforts to defeat the overdose epidemic. Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, the administration has invested significant resources in law enforcement efforts to crack down on illicit fentanyl trafficking and has seized historic quantities of illicit drugs at our border.

The Biden-Harris administration’s decisive measures to tackle drug trafficking include:

• Historic Seizures of Illicit Drugs at Our Border Border agents have intercepted more illicit fentanyl at border crossings in the past two fiscal years than in the previous five fiscal years combined.
• Deploying advanced drug detection technology at the border. The government has added dozens of new inspection systems at ports of entry and continues to invest in detection technology at U.S. borders, with dozens of additional systems coming online next year.
• Strengthening the United States’ ability to target foreign individuals involved in the global illicit drug trade. Since 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned more than 300 individuals and entities under this new Executive Order, cutting them off from the United States financial system.
• Taking law enforcement action against drug traffickers and their top associates operating around the world. The U.S. Department of Justice has arrested and prosecuted dozens of leaders of some of the world’s largest and most powerful drug cartels.
• Strengthening global action to combat synthetic opioids, including through the launch of the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats, which brings together more than 150

countries to combat the scourge of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, and the creation of a Trilateral Fentanyl Committee with the governments of Mexico and Canada to take joint action to disrupt drug trafficking.

• President Biden negotiated the resumption of drug control cooperation with President Xi, we established the bilateral drug control working group, and we deepened law enforcement cooperation with the PRC and information exchange on emerging trends. Since the renewed cooperation, the PRC has taken measures against companies that supply precursor chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl and announced three major planning actions in the past two months, bringing more than 55 dangerous synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals under control.
• Issuing a National Security Memorandum calling on all relevant federal departments and agencies to do even more than they are already doing to stop the supply of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into our country.
• We call on Congress to pass legislation to increase penalties for those who bring deadly drugs into our communities and close loopholes that drug traffickers exploit.
• Expansion of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program, which provides $298 million to support federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement efforts to stop drug traffickers in all 50 states. In 2023 alone, HIDTAs have helped law enforcement successfully disrupt and dismantle more than 3,000 drug trafficking and money laundering organizations, removing more than $17 billion in illicit drugs from the market (including more than 9,000 kilograms and more than 117 million pills of fentanyl), and seizing $641.9 million from drug traffickers.

Historic funding to tackle the overdose epidemic

The Biden-Harris administration has not only enacted historic policy measures, but has also invested historic amounts of money to make those policy changes a reality. Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has invested $167.2 billion in total drug enforcement funding — 20.6 percent more than the previous administration — to address the opioid crisis.

The Biden-Harris administration has also invested 40.6% more in substance abuse treatment than the previous administration.