WASHINGTON, D.C – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that sets national health policy, today joined several of his Senate Democratic colleagues at a Capitol Hill press conference to highlight drastic Medicaid funding cuts in the Senate Republican health bill that would dramatically hamper efforts to combat New Jersey’s opioid addiction crisis.

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“It’s no exaggeration to say that Republicans have put this country on a crash course that will endanger American lives and threaten the financial security of millions upon millions of families,” said Sen. Menendez. “I cannot, for the life of me, understand how my Republican colleagues can reconcile their concern with the opioid epidemic with a plan that ends the Medicaid expansion responsible for saving so many lives. And the $2 billion they set aside to fight the national opioid crisis next year won’t even make a dent and is an insult to every community battling this epidemic.”

Heroin deaths in New Jersey are up 160 percent since 2010. In 2015, the last year data is available, more than 33,000 New Jerseyans sought treatment for heroin or opioid abuse, significantly outpacing previous year’s figures, with nearly 1,500 dying from overdose. The heroin death rate in five counties – Camden, Ocean, Cape May, Union, and Middlesex – significantly exceeds the number of treatment beds available per 100,000 people.

The senator shared the story of Alton Robinson, a Rockaway, N.J., man from Morris County whom he met last Friday when Sen. Menendez visited a community health center in Newark. Alton credits Medicaid for saving his life by helping him overcome a decades-long battle with addiction and allowing him to get the substance abuse treatment, physical and mental healthcare he needed. He now spends his working days helping others beat addiction, the vast majority of whom also rely on Medicaid.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 78 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, and heroin-related deaths more than tripled from 2010-2014 with approximately three out of four new heroin users report first abusing prescription opioids. Veterans are twice as likely to die from an accidental opioid overdose as non-veterans, according to a 2011 study of the VA system.

Last month, Sen. Menendez helped lead a group of 28 senators in calling for increased federal funding to help combat the opioid and illicit drug abuse epidemic.

Sen. Menendez cosponsored the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which was signed into law last year and provides resources to states to expand disposal sites for unwanted prescription drugs and to develop better monitoring systems for prescription drug use, makes naloxone more widely available to law enforcement agencies and other first responders to help prevent overdoses and save lives, creates an evidence-based opioid and heroin treatment and intervention program, and sets national treatment standards.

Sen. Menendez pressed then-U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in February 2016 to expand access to medication assisted treatment options, which led HHS a month later to move to double the current patient limit for qualified physicians who prescribe buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorders.

Last year, Sens. Menendez and Cory Booker hosted a forum on the opioid epidemic with the U.S. Surgeon General local doctors, treatment providers, and advocates. In March, the Senators convened a statewide summit to explore solutions to the heroin and opioid addiction epidemic gripping New Jersey and the nation. They partnered with local law enforcement to promote National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day and encourage New Jerseyans to discard all unwanted narcotic pain killers and other prescription drugs at participating local police stations and county prosecutor’s offices. Menendez held another strategy session in the fall of 2015 to discuss drug treatment options and programs, access to medications, and explore ways the federal government can help.

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