Clinton proposes $7.5 billion U.S. fund to fight addiction

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has laid out a plan for fighting drug and alcohol addiction in the United States, including a new $7.5 billion federal fund to help states tackle a problem afflicting 23 million Americans.

In an opinion piece in the Manchester Union Leader, a New Hampshire newspaper, Clinton set out five goals including empowering communities to prevent drug use among teenagers and making addiction treatment available to every person needing it. ‘Twenty-three million Americans suffer from addiction, but only 1 in 10 get treatment,’ she wrote in the piece posted on the Union Leader’s website on Tuesday.

Clinton said the federal government ‘will draw on a new $7.5 billion fund to help states meet their goals’ in fighting what she called a ‘quiet epidemic.’ She did not make clear how she would pay for the program. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 election, said she would ‘prioritize treatment over prison for low-level and nonviolent drug offenders, so we can end the era of mass incarceration.'”

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