December 1, 2025
The SUPPORT Act reauthorizes key programs focused on opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery, extending funding through 2030. It enhances state and tribal capacity through grants for opioid response, strengthens mental health and substance use treatment access, and expands peer support and recovery initiatives. Key provisions include updated training requirements for prescribers, improved access to addiction medicine, and expanded use of electronic health records in care settings. The legislation also establishes new funding for youth prevention, comprehensive recovery centers, and community-based recovery programs, while ensuring equitable access to services and addressing workforce and economic impacts of the opioid crisis.
Trump signs major opioid-fighting legislation |
| The SUPPORT Act, a 2018 law that aimed to prevent and treat illicit opioid use, expired two years ago. |
| By Carmen Paun | 12/01/2025 07:02 PM EST, Politico PRO |
| Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has been mostly focused on stopping drug cartels from smuggling fentanyl into the country. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS| AFP via Getty Images |
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President Donald Trump signed a bill Monday reauthorizing major legislation to prevent and treat illicit opioid use, more than two years after it expired. The SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act reauthorizes billions of dollars in funding for states and tribes to fight opioid addiction and to provide first responders with the opioid reversal medication naloxone, among many other provisions. The House passed the bill in June, with a 366-57 vote, and the Senate cleared it by unanimous consent in September. Trump signed the original SUPPORT Act in 2018. It was seen as one of the most significant domestic policy laws of his first term. But the billions in funding it authorized were not enough to stave off a spike that saw well over 100,000 Americans dying annually during the pandemic, mostly driven by the highly addictive synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The number of overdose deaths has since dropped from a peak of nearly 113,000 between August 2022 and August 2023 to an estimated 76,000 in the year ending in April 2025, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Lawmakers, particularly in the House, have tried to reauthorize the SUPPORT Act since it expired on Sept. 30, 2023. Congress has nonetheless continued to fund services to prevent and provide treatment and support to people with opioid use disorder. But the Trump administration’s moves this year to halt funding for some substance use and mental health services and lay off hundreds of people at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services agency that administers many of the funds provided by the SUPPORT Act, have raised concerns among Democrats and addiction treatment experts that the reauthorization could be symbolic.“These programs risk being reauthorized in name only if SAMHSA is not fully equipped to administer them,” said Stephen Taylor, the president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, in a statement Monday. The group represents doctors who treat people with substance use disorder. Thirty House Democrats, led by Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey, opposed the reauthorization in June. Pallone cited the administration’s cost-cutting as his reason.Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has been mostly focused on stopping drug cartels from smuggling fentanyl into the country, imposing tariffs on countries such as Canada and China in an effort to get them to step up enforcement. The military has also carried out missile strikes on boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs from Venezuela, killing dozens of unidentified people. Several members of Congress, including Republicans, have questioned the legality of these strikes but the administration has insisted the attacks followed international law. |