Back in March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a commission on opioids and giving that panel 90 days to make recommendations on how to combat the painkiller scourge. On Wednesday, more than 30 days into that period, the president finally got around to appointing that panel.

Commissions and recommendations are one thing. Actual action is another. Beyond the window dressing of the March executive order, the Trump administration has given little indication that it is serious about tackling the opioid epidemic.

The problem is genuine, widespread and growing. The death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has more than tripled in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 40 people die each day in the United States from overdoses.

Even in Minnesota, which has not been as ravaged by the opioid plague as some other states, overdoses have surpassed traffic accidents as the leading preventable cause of death. The CDC last week linked a 300 percent increase in hepatitis C cases to the opioid epidemic.

And yet, consider the actual actions taken and proposed by the president and Congress.

The health care legislation the Republicans crammed through the House last month to a great deal of applause from the White House would roll back the Medicaid expansion that many of the hardest-hit states use to pay for addiction treatment.

The president’s budget proposal would slash the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy — the agency that coordinates efforts against drug abuse — some 95 percent and completely eliminate drug-fighting grants to community groups and law enforcement agencies. (In southern Minnesota, Brown County’s Underage Substance Abuse Coalition would lose $125,000 in annual funding, almost its entire budget, should this proposal take effect.)

Limiting access to treatment and reducing grass-roots resources would seem to be among the worst moves to make in combating the epidemic, yet there they are, the current drug policy of the Trump administration. For all of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ War-on-Drugs rhetoric — including this month’s misguided directive to federal prosecutors to seek maximum penalties in all drug cases — opioid abuse is at its heart a public health issue, not a law enforcement one.

Perhaps the newly appointed commission will point that out to President Trump. His course, however, appears to be set.

— Mankato Free Press, May 14