DEFUNDING HEALING –
June 13, 2025 – Michigan health officials fear cuts to drug prevention, treatment and recovery programs could stymie recent success fighting the opioid epidemic. Michigan has lost $93 million in federal grants for substance use disorder programs in recent months…
In addition to those losses, some Michigan substance use disorder providers have been notified of cuts to their own federal grants. While there is no tally for those individual losses, Bridge Michigan confirmed a medically assisted treatment program in the Upper Peninsula is endangered by grant cuts and $3 million was stripped from a planned treatment facility in Sault Ste Marie.
The cuts have sent state leaders scrambling to determine how to save services, including the distribution of Naxolone, a nasal spray that can revive overdose victims and is credited with helping prompt last year’s dramatic decline in drug deaths in Michigan
One potential solution: offsetting lost funding with money from the opioid lawsuit settlement, which is intended to expand services.
