(Boston Globe)
Christina Prignano May 8, 2019, 8:32 a.m.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is reviving a measure to tackle the opioid crisis as she continues to roll out ambitious policy proposals in her run for president.
The Massachusetts Democrat on Wednesday is bringing back a bill she first unveiled last year alongside Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings, also a Democrat: The CARE Act, which would pour $100 billion in federal money over ten years into initiatives around prevention and access to treatment.
Warren first introduced the CARE Act at an event in the South End just over a year ago. The main thrust of the legislation is the same, but she is adding measures that would aim to keep people receiving treatment in the workforce, citing statistics from the Mass. Department of Public Health that found construction workers at much higher risk for death from opioid overdoses.
Warren said that the opioid crisis has had a severe impact on “communities of color” and tied attacking the problem to her campaign’s themes of fighting greed and corruption while standing up for average Americans.
“The ongoing opioid crisis is about health care. But it’s about more than that,” she wrote in a blog post on the Medium website Wednesday. “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.”
She called out big pharmaceutical companies, writing that “fueling addiction is big business.” Executives of those firms whose negligent actions harm people would face criminal penalties as part of Warren’s previously proposed Corporate Executive Accountability Act, she said.
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