Thank you, Secretary Kennedy, for releasing the $700 million in behavioral health funding my father’s administration authorized. But it should not have taken this long. The delay cost lives. Putting people living on the streets first is right. They are the easiest to see and the easiest to ignore.

I have no problem with the mission.

I have a problem with one sentence in the guidance: STREETS grants cannot pay for harm reduction.

Harm reduction is not an ideology. It is a clean syringe, naloxone in a backpack, fentanyl test strips in a pocket. A place where someone can be kept breathing instead of being found dead.

I personally know people whose lives were saved by harm reduction. I know you do too. I know what they have done with those lives since. Not one of them would be in recovery today if they didn’t have access to harm reduction. They would be dead.

Anyone serious about recovery knows harm reduction saves lives. Ask people in the rooms. Ask the families keeping naloxone in the kitchen drawer.

If you want the Great American Recovery to mean something, fund what keeps people on this side of the grave. We do recover, but only if we make it out alive.