The Trump administration late Tuesday night quietly canceled billions in grant funding for mental health and addiction treatment programs, NOTUS has learned.
The National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors, or NACBHDD, estimated that the cuts could be as much as $2 billion to over 2,000 programs intended for people experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental health issues, NPR first reported Wednesday.
They were originally distributed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, within the Department of Health and Human Services. Neither federal agency responded to a request for comment.
Jonah C. Cunningham, the president and CEO of NACBHDD, told NOTUS that the cuts were to “programs of regional and national significance,” a category of grant that encompasses several areas of SAMHSA’s grant portfolio.
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“These are investments that were made both from Republican and Democratic administrations,” Cunningham said. “So these are bipartisan programs that have been revoked for reasons that are unclear.”
A source told NPR that some nonprofits may have to close as soon as Thursday. In a letter received by grantees from SAMHSA, the grant cancellations went into effect Tuesday.
The letter says the agency is canceling the grants to match SAMHSA’s “current priorities”, and links to a web page last updated in September. The letter reads: “SAMHSA is adjusting its discretionary award portfolio, which includes terminating some of its awards, in order to better prioritize agency resources towards the above-mentioned priorities.”
The letter also says the grants were canceled, not suspended, because no corrective action by the grantees could have aligned the programs with current SAMHSA priorities.
Several Democratic officials have denounced the cancellations, including Sen. Dick Durbin, who has been a strong advocate for mental health services.
“President Trump’s war on drugs will take more than a new President in Venezuela,” Durbin said in a social media post Wednesday. “Last night’s termination of addiction treatment is a step backwards that will cost lives.”
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