Senators Seek Better Fund Allocation for Opioid Woes from National Guard

Two senators, Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., are asking the National Guard to more effectively allocate funds to address the drug epidemic in states with high concentrations of overdose fatalities.

According to a release, the National Guard’s Counterdrug Program has been successful. In 2015, the West Virginia National Guard Counterdrug Task Force assisted 37 law enforcement agencies in seizures of illicit drugs and assets valued at over $1 billion and provided training to 400 law enforcement officers.

In New Hampshire, the Counterdrug Task Force assisted with 238 separate narcotics cases, resulting in 606 arrests and $7.85 million in seized illicit drugs, property, weapons and cash. Of those seizures, more than half were opiate-based drugs like fentanyl and heroin.

But in a letter sent Aug. 11 to Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau, the senators are asking that the Threat-Based Resource Model (TBRM) take into account state-specific drug overdose death rates and more effectively allocate funds to address the drug epidemic in states with high concentrations of overdose fatalities.

The letter said in 2014, a total of 47,055 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States — about 125 Americans a day.

“That is why it is so important that we fully utilize all available resources to fight this epidemic, including the National Guard,” the letter said. “To accomplish this goal, we encourage the NGB, in its next annual review of the Counterdrug Program’s TBRM, to restructure the funding model to accurately reflect the severity of this drug epidemic.”

Capito and Shaheen said currently, the TBRM fails to take into account state-specific drug overdose death rates, as reported by the CDC, when determining funding awards. Instead, the TBRM uses population as the basis for funding, which they said results in disproportionate funding allocations to states that may not face the same rates of drug abuse and overdose.

“New Hampshire and West Virginia were in the bottom third of state funding distributed by the Counterdrug Program in FY15 despite per capita overdose rates ranking in the top five of the states and territories.”