Director of National Drug Control Policy Visits MDTA

Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), contacted the UMN to visit with students and faculty while he was in Minneapolis last week.  As director of the ONDCP, Dr. Gupta is responsible for coordinating the National Drug Control Strategy which includes a budget of over $40 billion and 19 different federal agencies.  Dr. Gupta is the first researcher and medical doctor to lead the ONDCP. The current strategy created by Dr. Gupta and his team focuses largely on the ongoing overdose epidemic and will try to address both "untreated addiction and drug trafficking profits". The plan also embraces harm reduction strategies more than any previous regime, stating that the current strategy will be "based on the best science, evidence, and data available, and strives to usher in a new era of drug policy centered on individuals and communities."
 

During his visit Dr. Gupta went on a tour of CMRR led by CMRR director Dr. Kamil Ugurbil with community leaders engaged in addiction and recovery in Minnesota.  He also met with a group of students and researchers in the MDTA at different stages of their careers from undergraduate researcher to graduate student to residents and postdocs to early stage faculty.  Finally, he held a question and answer session with members of the MDTA over lunch to discuss current efforts to create new effective treatments and better strategies to implement harm reduction and recovery support services to all communities.