nj.com: Christie says he'll keep pushing Trump on opioid fight

11/29/2017

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talks about his opioid epidemic fight earlier this fall. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday that he is willing and able to continue his efforts to end the opioid addiction crisis after leaving office in January.

Christie, testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing held in Baltimore, said he would do whatever he could to push efforts to address the issue  after his second and final term as governor ended in less than two months.

"I'll play any role that leaders of both the Congress and the administration want me to play as a private citizen in 49 days to be able to continue this fight," Christie said. 

Christie, named by President Donald Trump to chair the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, kicked off the House committee hearing on the opioid crisis.

The Christie panel went out of business Nov. 1 after offering 56 recommendations on how to address the crisis and an admonition to Congress to spend the money needed.

"I am happy at any time to come and speak and meet with anyone and to use my relationship with the president, which goes back 15 years, to encourage people to say, 'This is the new water's edge in our nation's conversation,'" he said. 

Christie's comments were a reference to the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, R-Mich., who supported Democratic President Harry S Truman on foreign policy issues, saying, "We must stop partisan politics at the water's edge." 

The same way Vandenberg crossed party lines, Democrats and Republicans must come together to address the opioid crisis, Christie told the committee. He said 175 people are dying of opioid abuse every day, the equivalent of a Sept. 11 terrorist attack every two and a half weeks. 

"This is the greatest and broadest public health epidemic of our lifetime," Christie said. "Everything else pales in comparison to the breadth of this problem. It is everywhere in America.

"I read the obituaries that are happening regularly in our state, and in none of the obituaries do they designate whether the person who died is a Republican or Democrat," he said. "We have to end the politics here."

Christie told Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., that he would help them in any way he could.

"You have my word that I will not only speak out and continue to speak out publicly, but I'll play whatever role you two gentlemen want me to play in helping to do this," he said. 

That includes nudging Trump to act as well.

"I'm one of the folks who's know him for 15 years, so when he needs to hear some truth, he comes to New Jersey not just to play golf," Christie said. "Let's put it that way."

Christie defended Trump's decision to declare a national public health emergency involving the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rather than a national emergency under the Stafford Act, which would put the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of the effort.

Trump had said in August that he would declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Christie said his interactions with FEMA during Hurricane Sandy convinced him that another agency should be in charge.

"Having had a little experience with FEMA during a small storm in New Jersey, I don't believe that FEMA would necessarily be the best folks to adminster the funds," Christie said. "You want to see real confusion? Put FEMA in charge of naloxone," the drug used to address opioid overdoses.

Christie said he recalled the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when people were marching in the streets demanding government action.

There aren't any marches today, even though the opioid crisis has affected far more people, Christie said. That's because drug addiction is still looked at as a failing, even though it's a disease just like AIDS, he said. "I'll know we're bringing the urgency to this," Christie said, "when people are marching and showing their faces. When that happens, we'll know we're on our way to a solution."