While the Trump campaign touts his campaign to reduce drug abuse deaths, the United States is on pace to surpass the previous annual high, set last year, for overdoses, the Associated Press reports.
During the republican National Convention and throughout the campaign season, Trump and his surrogates have claimed success in the White House effort to combat drug abuse–originally in the portfolio of Jared Kushner and then handed to Kellyanne Conway.
But after a one-year dip in 2018, overdose deaths reached a new high in 2019 with 71,999 confirmed cases. The American Medical Association recently released a list of state references outlining the widespread increase in overdose deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly from opioids.
The Trump campaign has yet to release a policy outlining its plan to combat drug abuse, keeping with the campaign’s lack of producing any proposed policies. Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden, whose son Hunter is battling addiction, has outlined extensive programs, including creating courts to handle minor drug cases to help people go into supervised recover programs instead of shutting them off in jails.