Is The Biden Administration Really Funding Crack Pipes? Here’s How Such Claims Emerged

Holy smokes! This past week, you may have come across headlines like “Report: Biden admin to send crack pipes to drug addicts to advance ‘racial equity’” that were re-tweeted by folks like Representative Jim Banks (R-Indiana):

And claims such as Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) asserting that “Biden is sending free meth & crack pipes to minority communities in the name of ‘racial equity’” in the following tweet:

In fact, so many social media accounts lined up to push these crack pipe claims that “crack” ended up trending on Twitter. In this case, “crack” had nothing to do with concrete or pants being too low. This may have made you wonder what in TheBlaze were they talking about since U.S. President Joe Biden hadn’t made a “crack pipes for everyone” announcement. Was all of this actually true? Or were such claims not all that they were cracked up to be?

Well, such claims seemed to have originated from a funding opportunity announcement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for a Harm Reduction Program Grant. As the National Harm Reduction Coalition describes on their web site, “harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use.” Such negative consequences include drug overdoses and the transmission of infectious diseases.

The Harm Reduction Program Grant announcement didn’t say, “OK, time to give people crack pipes.” In fact, most of the 75 page document discussed different aspects of the program, which aimed to “support community-based overdose prevention programs, syringe services programs, and other harm reduction services.” A really long sentence with lots of commas indicated that “Funding will be used to enhance overdose and other types of prevention activities to help control the spread of infectious diseases and the consequences of such diseases for individuals with, or at risk of developing substance use disorders (SUD), support distribution of FDA-approved overdose reversal medication to individuals at risk of overdose, build connections for individuals at risk for, or with, a SUD to overdose education, counseling, and health education, refer individuals to treatment for infectious diseases such as HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and viral hepatitis, and encourage such individuals to take steps to reduce the negative personal and public health impacts of substance use or misuse.” If you made it through that sentence, you’ll notice that the words “crack pipe” did not appear in that sentence.

On page 8, there was a mention of funding that could potentially be used to purchase “safe smoking kits/supplies.” What are “safe smoking kits/supplies?” They are ones that won’t burn or cut the user and are not contaminated with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or other such pathogens. After all, you can’t snap your fingers and expect those with SUD to say, “OK, won’t do that stuff anymore.” That’s not how addiction works. So the thought is that while you are trying to get people off certain substances wouldn’t it be better to prevent them from getting injured, getting infected, or spreading infectious diseases? After all, lots of hepatitis benefits no one, except for perhaps the viruses.

So from where did all these “advance racial equity” claims come? Hmm, the funding opportunity did state that “the priority populations for this program are underserved communities that are greatly impacted by SUD.” Underserved means not getting enough resources compared to others. And underserved communities tend to be, surprise, surprise, ones with higher percentages of persons of color. So rather than simply give communities funding that are already getting proportionately more resources, the program will prioritizing those communities that historically have been getting the short end of the stick so to speak.

Regardless, on February 9, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Rahul Gupta, MD, MPH, MBA, issued a statement that said: “HHS and ONDCP are focused on using our resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives. Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”

It looks like many of the recent “crack pipe” claims on social media were quite off base, so to speak. They seemed to take some lines from a funding opportunity announcement very much out of context. By overlooking, you know, the science, they turned what has been an established way to address the complexities of substance use disorder into a political argument.