Americans
consume a reported 80 percent of the world’s opioid supply despite
being only 4.6 percent of the global population. (Yahoo News photo
illustration; photos: iStockphoto/Getty Images, Getty Images, AP[2])
President
Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency during a media
event at his private golf club in New Jersey on Thursday.
Two days after vowing to win the fight
against the opioid epidemic, Trump was asked if he thinks the opioid
crisis is an emergency and, if so, why he hasn’t declared it one yet.
“The
opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now: It
is an emergency. It’s a national emergency,” he said at the Trump
National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. “We’re going to spend a lot of
time, a lot [of] effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis.”
This
off-the-cuff remark is not enough to mobilize disaster relief money to
regions dealing with the crisis. But Trump said the documents required
to make his declaration official are forthcoming, describing the crisis
as “a serious problem, the likes of which we have never had.”
“You
know, when I was growing up they had the LSD and they had certain
generations of drugs,” he continued. “There’s never been anything like
what’s happened to this country over the last four or five years.”
A
week earlier, the White House Commission on Combating Drug Addiction
and the Opioid Crisis, which the president established by executive order on March 29, had recommended that Trump declare a national emergency.
“Your
declaration would empower your Cabinet to take bold steps and would
force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch
even further to deal with this loss of life,” wrote the commission,
which is headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “It would also
awaken every American to this simple fact: If this scourge has not found
you or your family yet, without bold action by everyone, it soon will.
You, Mr. President, are the only person who can bring this type of
intensity to the emergency and we believe you have the will to do so
and to do so immediately.”
President Trump with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a White House
meeting about opioid and drug abuse, March 29. (Photo: Nicholas
Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
The National Emergencies Act of 1976
authorizes the president to declare a national emergency that will
activate special powers granted by other federal statutes. The law does
not provide any emergency authority of its own.
In this case, the commission advised that Trump invoke the Public Health Service Act or the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act.
The Public Health Service Act was enacted in 1944 to stop the introduction and spread of transmittable diseases
from other countries to the United States. It was amended many times
over the years to address a host of health issues, including drug abuse.
The Stafford Act, which was signed into law in 1988, amending the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, helped to establish a system for providing federal natural disaster assistance, especially FEMA programs, to state and local government.
National
emergencies are typically declared in the aftermath of a national
disaster or terrorist attack rather than a long-term health crisis. The
specifics about what resources will be mobilized to help fight the
epidemic were not immediately clear.
According to Duhaime’s Law Dictionary,
though the Constitution secured presidential authority for declaring
national emergencies, there was no process on the books for ending one
until the 1970s.
In
the case of U.S. v. Bishop, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th
Circuit noted that U.S. presidents had declared national emergencies in
1933, 1950, 1970 and 1971 but none was ever revoked. Therefore, the
court said, a “national emergency must be based on conditions beyond the ordinary.
Otherwise it has no meaning.” As an example of something that does not
qualify, the court said the long-term threat of the Soviet Union’s
imperialistic ambitions does not validate placing the U.S. in “a
constant state of national emergency.”
A young man shoots heroin in a park in the South Bronx section of New
York City, June 7, 2017. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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