President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania will be in Atlanta next week to speak at the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit, held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel from April 22-25. They will be addressing the fight against the opioid epidemic, a cornerstone of both Trump’s presidency and his wife’s campaign as first lady.
In 2017 Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, with his Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse, which debuted last year, setting aside more than $6 billion to funding to fight the epidemic. More than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2017, the most of any year in history.
Already the White House is pointing to early successes, according to their website on the measure, the number of first-time heroin users ages 12 and older fell by more than 50 percent in July 2017 and between President Trump’s Inauguration and October 2018, high-dose opioid prescriptions fell by 16 percent.
The Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit is the largest gathering of “federal, state, and local professionals working to address the prescription drug abuse and misuse epidemic” in the U.S. The President and his wife will speak on Wednesday, April 24th, at 1:00pm. Limited seating remains, but guests can register HERE.
More than 3,000 guests will gather to hear a wide array of elected officials, doctors, and other experts discuss the ongoing opioid epidemic and what their states are doing to take steps to stop it. Other speakers include U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter (R-GA) and Hal Rogers (R-KY), Robert Redfield, MD, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Anne Hazlet, Senior Advisor for Rural Affairs, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Previous speakers at the event have included President Barack Obama, Speaker Newt Gingrich, and White House advisor Kellyanne Conway.
