President Donald Trump has pledged to battle the deadly epidemic of opioid drug abuse "until our job is done" and he claimed progress even though it is unclear whether the crisis has diminished.
Trump spoke an annual conference of health, law enforcement, elected and other officials who work to combat drug abuse and addiction, and used the appearance to advocate for the wall he wants to build on the US-Mexico border, saying it will help keep drugs out of the US. His wife, Melania, introduced him.
"My administration is deploying every resource at our disposal to empower you, to support you and to fight right by your side," Trump said on Wednesday.
"We will not solve this epidemic overnight but we will stop. ... We will never stop until our job is done." Before leaving the White House for the Atlanta event, Trump claimed credit for progress in combating the drug scourge.
"It's a big problem. It's a big addiction and we're handling it," the president told reporters. "We've made a tremendous amount of progress."
Members of Congress, he said, "figured out they were going to have to do it themselves and they did."
He said that almost 400 miles of wall will be in place along the border with Mexico by the end of 2020 and that it "will have a tremendous impact on drugs coming into our country."
The first lady spoke briefly about her visits to hospitals and treatment centres and her meetings with doctors and nurses as part of her own campaign to highlight the "terrible toll the opioid epidemic is having on children and young mothers."
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content