Trump opioid speech today: Watch live stream as President Trump speaks at Atlanta summit on drug abuse crisis — live updates

President Trump is delivering a speech in Atlanta Wednesday at the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin summit after 1 p.m. Wednesday, as the U.S. has seen drug overdose deaths skyrocket in the last decade. Over 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2017, compared with just under 17,000 in 1999, according to the National institute on Drug Abuse.

Mr. Trump has been vocal in making the battle against the opioid epidemic a top priority. But the president stopped short of declaring the crisis a national emergency, declaring it a public health emergency instead. Last fall, Mr. Trump signed legislation aiming to find other, less addictive options for treating pain. And Congress has provided billions in funding to address the crisis, but experts say it’s still not nearly sufficient. 

The president’s address also comes a day after federal prosecutors charged a major pharmaceutical distribution company, Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc., and two of its former executives, with conspiracy to distribute controlled narcotics and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. It’s the first time pharmaceutical executives have faced drug trafficking charges.

“Together we are going to end the scourge of drug addiction in America,” the president said in October. “We are going to end it or we are going to at least make an extremely big dent in this terrible, terrible problem.”

Mr. Trump has placed much of the blame for the drug epidemic on the porous southern border, pointing to the crisis as one of the top reasons for sealing it, even as many drugs come through legal ports of entry. 

“I think much of the drugs — the big loads of drugs, and certainly the human traffickers, go not through the ports of entry; they go through the open areas where they don’t have walls,” the president told supporters in a briefing on drug trafficking at the southern border last month. 

But he’s also pressured China to declare fentanyl — a deadly substance responsible for thousands of deaths in the U.S. — an illegal substance. Fentanyl deaths have increased 1,000 percent in the last six years, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

The four-day summit focuses on prevention and treatment of the drug crisis, with counselors, doctors, law enforcement personnel, public health officials, politicians and first responders expected to attend. 

“At the 2019, Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, the president and first lady will address more than 3,000 stakeholders from across the country engaged in the fight to combat the opioid crisis and provide an update on the Administration’s progress and success to reduce demand, raise awareness, and save lives,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.