Narcan has decreased KY overdoses. Naturally, it’s on Donald Trump’s cutting block | Opinion
I’m aware that, according to those who comment on our Kentucky.com site, I’m a dumber-than-a-rock-lib-suffering-from-Trump-Derangement-Sydrome, and I’m starting to think they’re right because for the life of me I do not understand this:
The federal government is currently proposing to redline the one thing that seems to be slowing down our horrific overdose deaths, the miracle drug known as Narcan.
According to Herald-Leader reporter Taylor Six, a draft budget from the Trump administration cuts out a $56 million federal grant awarded annually for distributing and training people to use the opioid overdose reversal medication. In Kentucky, Narcan is credited in this year’s decrease in overdose deaths, which fell for the third year in a row, according to the Kentucky Drug Overdose Fatality Report.
Narcan has been a tremendous game-changer in the endless drug crisis, which has tormented Kentucky for so many years.
In 2023, the overdose rate fell 10 percent; last year it was 30 percent, which state officials say is due to the broad disbursement of Narcan across the state.
Narcan is the brand name for naloxone, a nontoxic medication given through a nasal spray that reverses opioid intoxication or overdose from drugs like heroin and fentanyl. Anyone can administer it, which is why about 170,000 doses were handed out in Kentucky last year, according to the Kentucky Drug Overdose Fatality Report.
So the idea behind the Department of Government Efficiency, that crack team headed by Elon Musk, and Trump’s budget is to root out waste, fraud and abuse. If something is working, and not just working, but saving lives, can it really be considered any of those three things?
But the Trump administration has decided to cut it.
Why would Trump cut Narcan?
Seriously, I do not understand this.
Unless, of course, Trump and Musk are not trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and are really just blowing up the federal government willy-nilly with the most vulnerable as targets.
And that’s not all.
Despite the fact there’s bipartisan agreement that we need to do all we can to fight an opioid epidemic unleashed by big drug companies decades ago, Trump is also planning big cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
Medicaid pays for a huge amount of addiction treatment in Kentucky. The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy has estimated the proposed cuts could be a loss of more than $800 million for treating substance use disorders in the state.
Without Medicaid coverage, supplies would be disrupted for about 70% of Kentuckians who receive medication to treat opioid use disorder, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.
Nearly every family in Kentucky knows or is related to someone who has suffered through this scourge, and nearly all those people understand that access to and being able to pay for treatment is crucial.
So if you take away the things that save people’s lives, whether from overdose or addiction, you stop making sense.
You’d think that Trump’s health czar, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., himself a former heroin addict, would be able to explain this to his boss, but apparently not.
In January, he told the Wall Street Journal that treatment for addiction and substance abuse would be a priority if he were confirmed. Well, he was, and treatment no longer seems that important.
Unless, of course, you are actually targeting the most vulnerable in a society: The poor, the sick, the marginalized, the homeless, the people who don’t give campaign contributions and may not even vote.
Their friends and families vote, though, and one day we will parse through the many ways in which Trump’s policies hurt the people who support him. Because in a place like Kentucky — or Oklahoma or Texas or any red state disproportionately affected by drug addiction — we don’t want to lose the help to save our loved ones.
No matter who we voted for.
Even a deranged lib can figure that out.
This story was originally published May 8, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
