Christie strikes tougher tone on opiod prosecutions. Will it get Trump to act on opioids?

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/08/christie_sounds_a_lot_more_like_jeff_sessions_thes.html

NEWARK —  Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday evening again called for President Donald Trump to formally declare a national emergency in response to a plague of opioid overdoses that last year claimed more American lives than did the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

But as he did, the governor also publicly embraced the Justice’s Department’s new harder line on drug prosecutions to encourage a president whose administration has been inconsistent and hesitant in its response to the overdose crisis.

“I hope that when we get new leadership at the U.S. attorney’s office, that we’ll return to a time when we’re once again aggressive about drug enforcement as part of what needs to be done,” said Christie, who spent seven years as a U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

Laxness in interdiction, Christie argued Thursday, was helping fuel addiction.

“People who are profiting from spreading death throughout our neighborhoods and our communities need to held accountable and need to be put in jail for that.”

That jibes with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions new policy of seeking drug convictions that “carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.”

But the governor made his remarks at a showcase of artwork from opioid addicts in recovery, and the crowd of 100 applauded cautiously at this new, harder-line rhetoric.

Christie has devoted his final year in office to addressing opioid addiction, and in March, Trump appointed him chair of presidential commission tasked with determining the federal response to the opioid crisis.

However, the president has vacillated on whether to accept the findings of the commission’s interim report.

Two weeks ago, Christie and his five member presidential commission unanimously argued for the declaration of a national emergency by the president, noting that 142 Americans die of drug overdoses daily, mostly from opioids.

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At first, Trump’s White House seemed to dismiss the national emergency declaration recommendation.

“We believe at this point that the resources that we need or focus that we need to bring to bear to the opioid crisis can be addressed without the declaration of emergency,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on August 8.

But two days later, when Trump was asked by a reporter why the loss of as many American lives as were claimed by the 9/11 attacks every three weeks was not a national emergency, the president reversed himself.

“The opioid crisis is an emergency and I’m saying right now it’s an emergency. It’s a national emergency,” Trump said on August 10. “We’re going to draw it up and we’re going to make it a national emergency.”

Two weeks later, there’s been no formal emergency declaration by Trump.

On Thursday, a White House spokesman told CNN that the delay was because of “a legal review” and said that “we are declaring one but we are considering which option to use to declare one.”

A national emergency declaration made under the Stafford Act would provides access to resources and funding typically used by FEMA after natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy. Declaring one under the Public Health Services Act would give the Health and Human Services Department broader authority to act.

On Thursday, Christie again pressed his case for the president to make a formal declaration.

“I urged the president to declare a national emergency because this is a national emergency,” said Christie Thursday. “Let us have the kind of response that that loss of life that we had to the loss of life in the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.”

But as he exited the DEA’s second annual opioid-themed art show at Newark’s Gateway Center, the governor declined to answer questions about if he knew why the president had not made a formal emergency declaration.

Filed under: General Problems