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Senate Approves Bill to Combat Opioid Addiction Crisis

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, lauded Congress for sending a comprehensive opioid bill to President Obama that including support for addiction recovery. The bill didn’t include funding, however.Credit...Zach Gibson/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to tackle the nation’s opioid crisis, sending to the president’s desk the most sweeping drug legislation in years in a rare instance of consensus in Congress.

The measure, which passed, 92 to 2, would strengthen prevention, treatment and recovery efforts, largely by empowering medical professionals and law enforcement officials with more tools to help drug addicts. It would also expand access to a drug that emergency medical workers could use to help reverse overdoses and improve treatment for the incarcerated. Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, voted against the measure. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.

“This is a historic moment, the first time in decades that Congress has passed comprehensive addiction legislation, and the first time Congress has ever supported long-term addiction recovery,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, whose state has been plagued by opioid addiction. “This is also the first time that we’ve treated addiction like the disease that it is, which will help put an end to the stigma that has surrounded addiction for too long.”

Tensions over spending threatened to derail the measure as Democrats insisted the Senate also vote on immediate funding to pay for the programs the bill authorizes. Republicans said funding would be addressed in the appropriations process later this year.

Congress has yet to send a spending bill to President Obama for his signature this year. With the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, Congress will have just a few weeks to do so when it returns from a seven-week recess, which begins at the end of this week.

Mr. Portman, who has long pushed for improved policies on opioid and heroin addiction, said he was optimistic the Senate Appropriations Committee would fully fund the policy measure — which, he said, calls for increasing overall funding by 47 percent.

“This is an authorization bill,” Mr. Portman said. “It authorizes more money than we’ve ever even dreamed about for opioids.”

Democrats were unmoved, citing Congress’s chronic difficulties in passing spending bills. The Obama administration has urged Congress to add funding into this bill, including $920 million for states to help treat addicts.

Democrats pressed to start on Wednesday with a measure that would devote $600 million in emergency funding, which typically means the money would not need to be made up with cuts to other programs. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the bill was an empty promise without the funding to increase the number of hospital beds and treatment providers — resources necessary to really address the crisis.

“What it says is this: that colleagues on the other side of the aisle are more interested in showing voters they’re doing something about opioids than actually doing something,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican, dismissed the idea that the drug programs would ultimately not receive the funding needed. “There’s plenty of money,” he said.

The bill, which the House passed on Friday, is a compromise between the House and the Senate, combining 18 measures that passed the House in May with the Senate’s more comprehensive legislation, which was approved in March.

Marvin Ventrell, the executive director of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, said the measure was an “extraordinary” step forward for a nation that largely does not address addiction as a health problem. But while advocates were pleased with it, they remain concerned that the funding that would make this bill a reality could ultimately fail to materialize, he said.

“To say that this bill without the additional funding is meaningless would be a gross overstatement,” Mr. Ventrell said. “But to say that it would fulfill its purpose without additional funding would also be incorrect.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: In Rare Congressional Consensus, Opioid Crisis Bill Passes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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