The Trump administration’s war on addiction has left behind an oft forgotten piece of the problem: alcoholism and the lifelong damage it can do to children
BISMARCK, North Dakota — .
President Donald Trump has made the opioid crisis a signature feature of his presidency, and it’s likely to figure into his reelection campaign. With bipartisan support, he has boosted treatment, research and prevention, including directing millions to help babies exposed to narcotics in the womb. And that doesn’t cover the cost of prisons and jails, which is where a lot of people with FAS end up.Marc Young has been jailed three times since his 18th birthday last July and was homeless for most of last year. He spent much of his childhood in treatment centers, often far from home, and he struggles with developmental disabilities, aggressive behavior and mental health challenges.
But the financial pressures began before Trump. The Obama administration in 2015 quietly gutted a small federal program overseen by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that helped individuals and families affected by fetal alcohol syndrome. A spokesperson for the agency, known as SAMHSA, said the issue is no longer in its purview.
An annual meeting of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome last September was a small affair by Washington standards. Gathered in a cramped room in a basement of an old Washington hotel, about two dozen advocates — many parents of kids with fetal alcohol syndrome — discussed big ideas like asking the U.S. surgeon general to issue a call to action, or launching a class action lawsuit with injured families in the same vein as the massive opioid litigation.
Marc, who has shared his story with POLITICO by phone and text messages, knows he’s “always going to be stuck with it” and wants to get help, when and where he can find it. “If you stick on your own,” he said in one recent phone call, “I kind of think that’s how it gets worse.” “We lived with locks on everything,” said his dad. “Our food pantry had a lock. The freezer had a lock ... Because he would either steal food or he would steal knives.”
“There’s no money for families and there’s not enough help professionally for us — families or the child,” said Jeff Holt, who is raising his grandson, Marcus, with FAS in Grand Forks, North Dakota. “The more rural we are, the less help there is.”
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