THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As opioids continue to kill Americans at a rate that threatens to overtake guns as the All-American favorite in that category, our Tangerine Shitheel has leapt into action and declared it a public health emergency. His actions allow the states to take certain actions and shift the use federal monies to combatting the plague. This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul as he is peoviding no new monies in the face of the GOP's sought after huge tax cuts.

The move falls short of Mr. Trump’s sweeping promise to declare a national emergency on opioids, which would have triggered the rapid allocation of federal funding to address the issue, and does not on its own release any money to deal with the drug abuse that claimed more than 59,000 lives in 2016.

But it would allow some grant money to be used for a broad array of efforts to combat opioid abuse, and would ease certain laws and regulations to address it.

Mr. Trump’s directive, to be announced in an address at the White House on Thursday afternoon before he signs a presidential memorandum on opioids, would fulfill a vow that he made when he assumed office to make tackling opioid abuse one of his top priorities. But he has so far taken limited action to carry that out.

The president in August called the opioid crisis a “national emergency.” But he did not sign a formal declaration designating it as such, allowing the prospect to languish amid resistance in his administration about making an open-ended commitment of federal funds to deal with a crisis that has shown no signs of abating. The crisis has claimed tens of thousands of lives — a death rate that one administration official noted Thursday rivals the number of Americans killed during the Vietnam War.

Beyond the lack of funding, it is not clear how much impact the public health declaration will have in the short term, given that Mr. Trump has yet to name central players who would carry it out, including a drug czar to steer a broader strategy on opioids and a secretary of Health and Human Services who would tailor policies and identify funding streams.

Typical Pumpkin Potemkin measure, grab a few headlines and walk away bragging about what a great job he did without doing anything of substance. That is the real substance abuse.