On Thursday Oregon Governor Kate Brown appeared at the U.S. Capitol for the Senate health committee’s special hearing on opioids. Brown told the congressional committee that they should change their focus from treating drug abusers as criminals to treating them as patients.
Governor Brown has experienced the opioid epidemic in her own household. At the hearing she told the story of her son, who would abuse drugs daily to get by. Brown said a teacher caught him abusing drugs in high school, but when the family tried to get him help, their health insurance stood in the way.
She went on to say how the War on Drugs is continuing to criminalize people who should be getting medical treatment not punished. She also went to to acknowledge that the federal government has taken note of the epidemic.
In 2017 President Donald Trump declared the Opioid Epidemic a national crisis, claiming that his administration would take on the epidemic head on. The White House also recently proposed $13 billion in new funding for treatment with the Department of Health.