Diane Black, campaigning for Tenn. governor, releases opioid strategy

Hoping to stand out in a crowded field for Tennessee governor, Rep. Diane Black released a comprehensive blueprint Wednesday for tackling the opioid crisis, making her the latest 2018 candidate to highlight an epidemic that is ravaging U.S. communities.

Ms. Black, a Republican, says her training as a licensed nurse gives her a unique perspective on the problem. Her plan would target doctors who dole out too many pills and painkiller manufacturers who hide the addictive nature of their products, while delivering treatment to addicted inmates so that taxpayers don’t waste money on repeat arrests and further incarceration.

It would fund new investigators to root out overprescribing, enhance penalties for the sale or manufacture of fentanyl — a deadly synthetic opioid — and expand a second-degree murder statute to hold dealers accountable for deaths caused by their products.

“The opioid epidemic is a scourge on our society, and I firmly believe the next governor of Tennessee will be judged by how she handles this crisis,” said Ms. Black, who wants to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.

Other Republicans and Democrats in the governor’s race have proposed everything from harnessing faith-based organizations to expanding Medicaid under Obamacare to boost assistance to those struggling with addiction.

The opioid epidemic killed 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016 and pushed its way onto the national stage during that year’s presidential primaries, with candidates promising to make anti-opioid efforts a national priority.

President Trump was one of those candidates, and since taking office he has labeled opioids a national health emergency. He and Congress have pledged to add billions of dollars to federal anti-drug efforts.

Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said Appalachia, parts of the Midwest, New England and Southern states with “difficult economies” will be hot spots for opioid talk on the campaign trail, since those are places “that have suffered and where grieving parents will want answers.”

The issue is front-of-mind in Ohio, which suffers from a high overdose rate and will host high-profile races for the Senate and the governor’s office this year.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio Democrat, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill designed to interdict fentanyl at the Mexico border and ports of entry. Mr. Trump recently signed it into law.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a leading Republican candidate for governor, filed a lawsuit in early 2017 against five opioid makers for “unleashing” the addiction crisis.

Two years ago, another Ohioan — Republican Sen. Rob Portman — focused on opioids and cruised to victory over Democratic challenger Ted Strickland, a former governor, in what was initially billed as a challenging climate for GOP candidates.

Now, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri is carrying out a similar strategy from the other side of the political aisle. A Democrat, she is running in a red state that Mr. Trump won by nearly 20 percentage points.

Republicans have struggled to recruit a strong challenger, though Ms. McCaskill is using her position as ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to highlight and investigate the pharmaceutical industry’s role in fueling the crisis.

“I’m trying to go after the greed. I’m trying to go after a system that’s broken. I’ve actually gotten pressure to back off,” Ms. McCaskill says in a campaign ad. “I don’t care how much money Pharma has, I don’t care how influential they are. We’ve got to at this with everything we’ve got.”

Her leading GOP opponent, state Attorney General Josh Hawley, has launched his own probe of opioid makers and filed suit against three of them in June, saying the companies misrepresented the drugs’ risks.

Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, another Democrat facing reelection in Trump country, also is touting his efforts to reel in the epidemic, since his state suffers from the highest overdose-death rate in the country.

He boasts that he forced Rep. Tom Marino, Pennsylvania Republican, to withdraw as a nominee to lead the White House drug control police office, after the House member had pushed a bill that raised the threshold for the Drug Enforcement Administration to immediately suspend shipments of opioids.

“The hidden value of this issue is that it is not a partisan issue, so that endangered red state Democrats like McCaskill and Manchin can use it to appeal to voters who are cool to Democrats,” said Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Likewise, conservatives, such as Diane Black, can soften their images with swing voters.”