President Barack Obama will ask for more than $1 billion in the new budget to fight drug abuse and overdoses, which are at record highs in the U.S., the White House said Tuesday, NBC News reported.
Obama's budget request to Congress aims to expand treatment for people who get hooked on prescription opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin, as well as people who use the cheaper street drug heroin.
There's no doubt it's a crisis — more than 47,000 people died from drug overdoses last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. That's more than died in traffic accidents.
Most of the $1 billion would go to states under joint state-federal agreements to get more treatment capacity going. A small amount — $50 million — would pay for a corps of 700 providers who know how to use drugs and therapy to treat drug addiction.
