The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a new framework for helping Americans facing the often-intertwined circumstances of addiction and homelessness.
In a new toolkit, the White House unveiled a “treatment first” model that boosts faith-based interventions while rejecting harm reduction principles and the “housing first” strategy that characterized the Biden administration’s approach. While the new strategy favors medicalized approaches to treating addiction, it cites abstinence as the ultimate goal as opposed to also celebrating decreased drug use and related harms.
The toolkit is in keeping with the Trump administration’s prior actions on addiction issues, ranging from its Great American Recovery Initiative to a “tough love” approach toward people who use drugs to a broader hostility toward harm reduction principles.
“Treatment must come first. Recovery begins when we connect people with effective care, not leave them trapped in addiction and homelessness,” health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “This toolkit gives communities practical, evidence-based strategies to expand treatment, support lasting recovery, and help people reclaim their independence.”
