The Trump administration says they want to fix the problem. But their actions tell a different story.
Right now, the Trump administration is continuing massive budget cuts that will make it harder—if not impossible—for many people to get the help they need.
Federal funding cuts will gut:
This means longer wait times, fewer services, and more lives lost. For families already struggling with addiction, it could mean showing up for help—only to find the door shut.
The Trump administration and Congress have already slashed:
Unfortunately, this is likely an underestimate as the full scope of cuts come to light. And now, the administration wants Congress to slash $26 billion more from overdose prevention and addiction care.
Their plan? Restructure the Department of Health & Human Services and create a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA)—a name that sounds good but could eliminate critical programs like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and portions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which lead our response to addiction and overdose. These cuts are dangerous and will put more lives at risk.
The Drug Policy Alliance and the Legal Action Center are tracking these threats. Read our analysis tracking these funding cuts to learn what’s at stake—and how you can fight back to protect yourself, your community, and the people you love.
*This tracker does not yet include other cuts to staff and funding resulting from the government shutdown. Stay tuned for an update soon that reflects these developments and the latest data.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funds treatment programs, medications for opioid use disorder, naloxone distribution, and helps connect people—especially in rural and underserved communities—to care. Despite SAMHSA’s central role in addressing the overdose crisis nationwide, the Trump administration and Congress are dismantling it by reducing its funding and workforce.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Meta House provides addiction treatment specifically for women—offering outpatient and residential services that also support their children. In 2024 alone, Meta House served 331 women and 168 children. Clients who stayed in outpatient care for at least 90 days showed high rates of abstinence or reduced use. Without SAMHSA grants, this program in Wisconsin would not be possible and hundreds of women could be left without addiction treatment and care—and their families without support.
For example, if SAMHSA’s PRNS programs are eliminated, Maine will lose nearly $4 million and West Virginia will lose more than $6 million in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment and recovery funding. This will cause immediate harm by taking away grants from a variety of interventions like rural emergency medical services, treatment and recovery centers, and SUD support for pregnant women. Losing these targeted funds will put lives on the line by dramatically reducing local capacity for prevention, treatment, and overdose response services.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)—primarily through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—leads scientific research, clinical trials, and public education to understand, prevent, and treat addiction. It funds studies on how substance use affects the brain and body, and develops and tests medications and behavioral therapies for addiction treatment. Although drug and addiction research is needed now more than ever, the Trump administration and Congress are slashing vital grants and laying off our leading experts and researchers.
The Trump administration would collapse three institutes in the NIH that focus on mental health and substance use (i.e. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute of Mental Health) into one center. This would reduce funding across these three institutes by $1.86 billion billion from 2024 levels.
Many critical addiction studies and clinical trials are now on hold which will have impacts worldwide because NIDA (which is housed within NIH) funds 85% of global addiction research. Putting this research in limbo jeopardizes future progress in medications, behavioral treatments, and overdose prevention.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports health centers, overdose prevention, and public health surveillance across the country. It funds local health departments that provide frontline overdose prevention services. They also collect and analyze national overdose data.
The National Center for Injury Prevention Center would be moved from the CDC to the Administration for a Healthy America, and funding for the Center would be cut by over $200 million from current funding levels.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) funds addiction treatment and recovery programs for people involved in the criminal legal system. These individuals have high rates of addiction and are also at risk of overdose. DOJ funds are used for things like alternatives to incarceration and programs that respond to health emergencies and connect people to lifesaving services. If further DOJ cuts go through, it will create barriers to treatment and recovery with higher risk of overdose for people involved in the criminal legal system. It would also threaten programs that have diverted people with first-time drug offenses from jail to treatment.
Approximately 40 grant programs that were historically funded at over $1 billion would be eliminated. Many of these programs focused on reentry, alternatives to incarceration, and mental health and substance use disorder treatment for people caught up in the criminal legal system.
For example, in North Carolina, Project Lazarus—a nonprofit formed in response to sky-high overdose death rates in Wilkes County—lost its DOJ grant. This will result in fewer second chances, more incarceration, and a reversal of progress in a community that has already fought hard to reduce overdose deaths.
The federal government is now threatening to slash an additional $26 billion from overdose prevention and addiction care—gutting programs funded by SAMHSA, the CDC, NIH, and DOJ. These cuts would strip communities of lifesaving tools like naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and addiction treatment.
The result? More overdoses. Fewer treatment options. A public health crisis made worse.
But we’ve faced impossible fights before—and won. The Drug Policy Alliance fought for naloxone and fentanyl test strips when few others would. Today, those tools are saving lives and have bipartisan support.
We can do it again—with you.
If you have questions or inquires about the tracker, please email [email protected].
This project is a collaboration between the Drug Policy Alliance and the Legal Action Center. We gathered data for this project from a variety of sources, including news reporting, information made public by the federal government, and unofficial reporting led by current and former members of the government. Learn more about our data sources and methodology here.
The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) addresses the harms of drug use and drug criminalization through policy solutions, organizing, and public education. We advocate for a holistic approach to drugs that prioritizes health, social supports, and community wellbeing. DPA opposes punitive approaches that destabilize people, block access to care, and drain communities of resources. We believe that the regulation of drugs should be grounded in evidence, health, equity, and human rights. In collaboration with other movements, we change laws, advance justice, and save lives.
The Legal Action Center (LAC) is a legal and policy organization that works to fight discrimination against, build health equity among, and restore opportunity for individuals and communities impacted by the criminal legal system, substance use and mental health conditions, and/or HIV/AIDS. LAC seeks to end and reverse punitive drug policies that have fueled mass incarceration and done nothing to quell the ongoing overdose crisis, to eliminate pervasive stigma surrounding substance use disorder and evidence-based treatment, and to create equitable access to affordable, community-based, quality care. LAC envisions a society that upholds the civil rights of all individuals, regardless of their medical condition and/or history of arrest/conviction, and aims to dismantle structural racism in both our health and justice systems that has yielded disproportionate harm on Black and brown people nationwide.