PoliticsWarren releases $100 billion opioid addiction plan ahead of West Virginia visit

© Stephen Maturen/Getty Images Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks to a crowd during a campaign stop at Fat Hill Brewing, May 4, 2019, in Mason City, Iowa.

2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released a plan to combat opioid addiction on Wednesday that would give $100 billion to address the issue over 10 years, including $2.7 billion each year for the counties and cities hardest hit by the epidemic.

Her announcement comes just before the senator from Massachusetts is scheduled to visit West Virginia, the state with the highest level of opioid-related deaths in the country and a state that voted handily for President Donald Trump in 2016. It will be Warren's first visit to the state since she announced her bid for the 2020 presidential ticket.

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The Opioid & Health Indicators Database is a free resource for policymakers, advocates, journalists, academics, and anyone else interested in learning more about the opioid epidemic and its intersection with HIV, Hepatitis C, and other infectious disease consequences of the rise in injection drug use.

Warren visited to outline her proposed legislation that would provide $ 100 billion over 10 years for addiction treatment and other programs to go after opioid addiction . The money would go to areas of the country most affected, based on their overdose death rates.

"The ongoing opioid crisis is about health care. But it’s about more than that. It’s about money and power in America — who has it, and who doesn’t. And it’s about who faces accountability in America — and who doesn’t," Warren wrote in a post on Medium. "If the CARE Act becomes law, every single person would get the care they need."

Warren first introduced the plan, called the CARE Act, in Congress last year alongside Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Together, they have also highlighted the way the crisis "has also severely impacted communities of color, exacerbated by existing health disparities," Warren wrote in a post on Medium.

In 2017, there were 692 opioid-related deaths in Baltimore alone, according to the Maryland Department of Health, and most were within the black community, Warren wrote on Medium. Under the CARE Act, Maryland would receive around $109 million per year in grants to fight the epidemic — more than half of which would be allocated to the hardest-hit communities in Maryland, like Baltimore, which could receive as much as $14.7 million per year.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently started using a new system to track ER overdoses and found the rate of opioid overdoses in the US rose from 14 to 18 per 100 ,000 ER visits over a year.

In a statement announcing the plan , Warren said the measures were intended "[to] restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and In a press release , Warren said, "Not only is Donald Trump giving a gang of billionaires control of our government, he's offering them a special tax

West Virginia, alongside states like Ohio and New Hampshire, which the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimated to have the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths in the country in 2017, could receive up to $323 million in combined annual funding under the plan.

Warren is scheduled to visit the hard-hit town of Kermit on Friday to roll out the plan. The small town of about 390 people has been ravaged by addiction and became a symbol of the country's problem in 2016 when a series by the Charleston Gazette-Mail revealed the trail of nearly 9 million opioid pills shipped to a single pharmacy in the town. Under the plan, Mingo County, where Kermit is located, could receive an estimated $533,700 in annual funding.

Over 10 years, the plan allocates $40 billion for states, territories, and tribal governments and $17 billion for public health, including research and training for health professionals. Organizations working on the front lines to address the opioid epidemic would receive $11 billion over 10 years.

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In November, the White House 's Council of Economic Advisers also released a report claiming that previous estimates of the economic cost of the epidemic According to the most recent final CDC data (from 2015), West Virginia has the highest age-adjusted opioid overdose death rate, with a rate of

The prevalence of opioid addiction within the Medicaid population also varied across states Medicaid remains on the front lines for treatment of opioid addiction providing .4 billion in Looking Ahead . The opioid epidemic has led to substantial health complications, increased health

The plan also puts $5 billion toward expanding access to naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose and is used by first responders.

"These resources would support the whole continuum of care, from early intervention, to harm reduction, to long-term support services. They would ensure access to mental health services and help provide critical wraparound services like housing support and medical transportation," Warren wrote on Twitter.

Warren's plan to address the issue comes on the heels of an announcement from fellow 2020 candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., whose plan to combat addiction and mental health treatment also calls for $100 billion. Other candidates have also proposed plans to address related issues, including former Rep. John Delaney, who last week released a plan to address mental health, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, whose plan to address the opioid epidemic goes where none of the other candidates have and calls for opioids to be decriminalized.