Progress on Overdose Deaths Could Be Jeopardized by Federal Cuts, Critics Say

The Trump administration has made deep cuts to the main federal agency focused on fighting opioid addiction, potentially jeopardizing the nation’s recent progress on reducing overdose deaths, some public health officials and providers say.

Created in 1992, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, known as SAMHSA, hands out billions in grants for mental health and addiction services. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, had a budget of about $7.5 billion last year.

Since January, the Trump administration has reduced the agency’s staff by more than half, scrapped $1.7 billion in block grants for state health departments and eliminated roughly $350 million in addiction and overdose prevention funding, according to a recent analysis by STAT, a health news website. The agency is currently without an administrator and is missing 12 of its 17 senior leaders. The cuts come at a time of steady progress in the fight against opioid addiction. Overdose deaths have fallen consistently since 2023. As of April, the latest figures available, there were 76,500 deaths over the previous 12 months — the lowest year-over-year tally since March 2020. The pandemic drove the number as high as nearly 113,000 in the summer of 2023, according to federal statistics.