Yang would declare a state of emergency and seek to bring down both the overdose number and addiction levels by 20% within four years.
Yang promises to make treatment programs much more available and affordable to anyone found with small quantities of these drugs.
Yang would require patients who have overdosed to be sent to "mandatory treatment centers" for three days to convince them to seek long-term treatment.
Yang would increase FDA regulation of opioids.
Yang would provide grants for their own treatment programs to states that decriminalize small quantities of opioid use/possession.
Yang would quintuple federal funding, from 4.5 billion to 20 billion per year to address opioid addiction through treatment and rehabilitation programs.
Yang would impose a new tax on opiate manufacturers to fund treatment and rehabilitation, retroactive to 2005.
“Let’s be honest – the opiate addiction crisis exists in large part because our government thought it was okay for companies to make a lot of money prescribing addictive opiates to millions of people. This was a failure of government. And now the Federal Government must do all it can to address this crisis, including funding treatment for millions of Americans. There is a modern-day plague in America and we cannot rest until it is controlled and defeated. Americans are dying every day—7 every hour—destroying families and communities everywhere. I will declare a state of emergency and commit billions of dollars to the fight, much of it from the drug companies who generated and have profited from this plague. If you or someone in your family has an opiate problem, we will provide you the resources you need to help you recover. We owe you that.”
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Decriminalize Opioids
Andrew Yang campaign website, 2019
