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# National Emergency Declaration Needed for Opioid Crisis: Report
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/national-emergency-declaration-needed-for-opioid-crisis-report/
- Published: 2017-07-31T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T22:37:29.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5139264

President Trump should declare a national emergency in order to deal with the ongoing opioid crisis, according to a just-released White House commissioned [interim repor](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/ondcp/commission-interim-report.pdf?ref=fdaweb.com)t. A final report will be issued in this fall. Declaring a national emergency would help the administration get a handle on the crisis, according to the report, which added that about 142 Americans die every day.

One of the top recommendations is to mandate prescriber education initiatives with the assistance of medical and dental schools across the country to enhance prevention efforts. The CDC and FDA should finalize, review and recommend national training standards working with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to ensure training courses are coordinated with other federal agencies, professional societies, medical schools, and residency programs to avoid discrepancies, the report says. “The FDA should also work with the ACCME to develop data analytics to determine whether courses change practices, increase patient referrals to treatment, and methods to improve compliance consistent with opioid prescribing education.”

Other top recommendations include: 

- Provide federal funding and technical support to states to enhance interstate data sharing among state-based prescription drug monitoring programs to better track patient-specific prescription data and support regional law enforcement in cases of controlled substance diversion.
- Better align, through regulation, patient privacy laws specific to addiction with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to ensure that information about substance use disorders be made available to medical professionals treating and prescribing medication to a patient.