Politics

Trump To Mom Who Lost Son To Opioids: Your Son ‘Will Not Have Died In Vain’

Saagar Enjeti White House Correspondent
Font Size:

President Donald Trump praised a mother who appeared on Fox & Friends Monday to discuss the loss of her son to an opioid overdose.

WATCH:

The mother, Sue Kruczek, said she wrote a letter to Trump for Valentine’s Day to express their desire for action on the ongoing opioid crisis.

We all kind of came together as a nation. And figured Valentine’s was very fitting. Ainsley: “These are moms who have lost their kids,” she wrote. “Through our broken hearts, we wanted to show the president our love and warm his heart through our tragedy and see the faces and, you know, a lot of it is all about numbers with this epidemic. And, you know, these are our babies.”

“I am pleased and I thank him tremendously for acknowledging and addressing this epidemic. And now, yes, certainly, you know, putting the funding out there and it’s a start. It’s a great start. And I know that this is only the beginning of the great and big things that he’s going to do to pull us out of this.”

A recent estimate from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that the number of opioid-linked deaths in 2016 was five times higher than recorded in 1999.

“From 2000 to 2016, more than 600,000 people died from drug overdoses,” the CDC claimed. “On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.”

Follow Saagar Enjeti on Twitter