A Proclamation on Nationwide Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, 2022

September 30, 2022

     Throughout Nationwide Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, we rededicate ourselves to reworking the lives of America’s youth by prevention.  We decide to constructing and supporting communities the place younger People can reside wholesome and fulfilling lives, free from the hazards of substance use, laying the groundwork for robust future generations.

     Our nation has been battered by twin crises in recent times:  an overdose epidemic and COVID-19.  Final yr, a document 107,000 People died of drug overdoses, ripping a gap in households throughout each neighborhood within the Nation.  Greater than a thousand of those that died have been youngsters — sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and buddies who nonetheless had their entire lives forward of them.  We can not let that proceed.  My Administration is drawing on evidence-based methods to stop substance use and to intervene early so we will help hold America’s younger individuals wholesome and protected.  We are supporting packages that educate younger individuals in regards to the dangers of drug and alcohol use — together with the hazards of illicit fentanyl and counterfeit drugs — and in regards to the life-saving energy of naloxone.

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     Stopping substance use throughout adolescence has been proven to considerably scale back the possibility of creating a substance use dysfunction later in life.  For each greenback we spend as we speak on efficient school-based prevention packages, we save $18 sooner or later by avoiding potential medical prices and boosting productiveness on the job.  Prevention packages additionally make younger individuals much less more likely to someday have kids who use substances, highlighting the far-reaching worth these efforts have throughout generations.

     People can all agree that this work is important –- no matter their political social gathering affiliation.  That’s the reason I made beating the opioid epidemic — our Nation’s most dangerous drug use disaster — a pillar of the bipartisan Unity Agenda that I unveiled on this yr’s State of the Union.  I do know that collectively, with assets and good coverage, we will overcome it.  Final yr, we invested practically $4 billion in American Rescue Plan funds to develop psychological well being and substance use companies and to assist faculty districts enhance the variety of social employees on workers by as a lot as 54 %.  My Fiscal Yr 2023 finances proposes $3.1 billion in Nationwide Drug Management funding for prevention, practically $850 million greater than final yr.  We’ve already offered greater than $120 billion for high quality tutoring, psychological well being, and afterschool packages.  We’re supporting Drug-Free Communities coalitions in all 50 States, giving native communities the instruments and assets to handle their very own youth substance use points in methods which are culturally acceptable.  We are working to make sure that States leverage Medicaid funding to assist colleges offering psychological well being and substance use care to our youth. We’re additionally working to make sure full parity between bodily and psychological well being care so all People have entry to high quality, inexpensive care, together with for substance use.

     This month, I name on everybody — mother and father, siblings, buddies, neighbors, lecturers, neighborhood members, and extra — to succeed in out to the younger individuals of their lives to share data, promote wholesome existence, and assist remodel lives by evidence-based substance use prevention.  We thank each particular person and each group engaged on the entrance strains to stop youth substance use.  And we renew our dedication to constructing a more healthy and extra supportive Nation the place all younger individuals can attain their full potential and obtain their desires.  I’ll by no means stop preventing to get everybody the assist and assets wanted to beat this disaster.  Nobody is ever alone.

     NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the USA of America, by advantage of the authority vested in me by the Structure and the legal guidelines of the USA, do hereby proclaim October 2022 as Nationwide Youth Substance Use Prevention Month.  Allow us to all take motion to implement apply and evidence-based prevention methods and enhance the well being of our Nation.

     IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I’ve hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, within the yr of our Lord two thousand twenty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the 2 hundred and forty-seventh.

                                 JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.