Bloomberg pledges $120 million to curb drug overdose deaths

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ALEX DANIELS of The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Michael Bloomberg will spend $120 million in an effort to reduce the soaring numbers of deaths from drug overdoses, he announced today at a healthcare summit he organized. The pledge more than doubles the $50-million philanthropic commitment he made toward the same goal in 2018.

Bloomberg’s pledge follows a preliminary finding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 93,000 people had died from drug overdoses in 2020, the majority of them from using opioids. The number of deaths during the first calendar year of the pandemic grew 30% over the total for 2019 and is the highest for a single year on record.

“We’re clearly going in the wrong direction,” said Kelly J. Henning, who leads the public-health program at Bloomberg’s grant-making organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Henning believes the work supported by Bloomberg’s original commitment, called the Overdose Prevention Initiative, has helped improve the situation. In Pennsylvania, where Bloomberg supported projects to curtail substance abuse in prisons and provide firefighters and police departments with the drug naloxone, the increase in overdose deaths was about half the national rate. Naloxone can be used in emergencies to stop an overdose.



FILE - U.S. businessman Michael Bloomberg speaks with participants prior to a meeting with Earthshot prize winners and finalists at the Glasgow Science Center in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Bloomberg will spend $120 million in an effort to reduce the soaring numbers of deaths from drug overdoses, he announced Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021 at a healthcare summit he organized. The pledge more than doubles the $50-million philanthropic commitment he made toward the same goal in 2018. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, Pool)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-michael-bloomberg-opioids-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention-health-6fa16e0fa3eff81560b9263b88167ce4

[Fred Garvin]

1. He wont spend a dime

This is a tax write off scheme imo

[jalan48]

2. His net worth is $59 B. This is the equivalent of someone who makes $59,000 a year pledging $120.

[Polybius]

3. But most people who make $59,000 pledge nothing

I'm happy that he's giving something.

[Fred Garvin]

4. Hes diverting money

To avoid capital gains taxes.

He isn't giving, he's exploiting the system, for profit

[Hav]

6. So he shouldn't be giving anything to this cause?

I think those who get help (as in not dying) and the people running those organizations trying to help don't give a damn if that money is used to offset some of his taxes.

[JudyM]

5. Hoping he plugs part of it into supporting research on using cannabis as alt. painkiller as well as

a means of weaning folks off opioids.

[twodogsbarking]

7. Thank you Mr. Bloomberg.

[left-of-center2012]

8. I knew people would attack him for this

"No good deed goes unpunished"