18 | New Scientist | 24 October 2020
in 2017, according to the US
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. It is also a reversal of
a short-term trend that showed
drug overdose deaths declining
slightly in 2018, mainly due to a
reduction in prescription opioid
deaths. A rise in overdose deaths
from illegal drugs has reversed
that progress. In 2020, overdose
deaths are spiking again,
according to the American
Medical Association.
In 2017, the Trump
administration declared the
opioid crisis a public health
emergency, though the US
Government Accountability Office
found that this has had a minimal
impact. The administration
expedited a survey on prescription
drug trends and waived some red
tape for research on treatment.
In 2019, Trump announced that
the federal government would set
aside $1.8 billion for treatment and
prevention. States have used the
money to treat overdoses and
fund recovery programmes.
More funding may be needed,
especially now. “The covid-19
pandemic has exacerbated an
already difficult situation by
reducing access to life-saving
treatment, harm reduction, and
recovery support services, while
increased stress and isolation
might increase the risk of
addiction and substance use
disorders,” wrote Leana Wen at
George Washington University in
Washington DC and Nakisa Sadeghi
at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill in The Lancet.Shoot for the moon
Obama’s space policy was
muddled. He cancelled a George
W. Bush-era programme to send
astronauts to the moon in favour
of focusing on Mars, via a humanmission to an asteroid that had
lukewarm support.
Under Trump, NASA has the
moon firmly in its sights. “This
time, we will not only plant our
flag and leave our footprint, we
will establish a foundation for
an eventual mission to Mars and
perhaps, someday, to many worlds
beyond,” Trump announced in
2017, on the 45th anniversary of
the Apollo 17 lunar landing.
In 2019, vice president Mike
Pence set an ambitious timeline,
directing NASA to return to the
moon by 2024. “The goal of 2024
put some energy into the system
and it’s been aggressive and
helped things move faster than
they would have,” says Mary Lynne
Dittmar at the Coalition for Deep
Space Exploration.
Whether Trump’s space policy
can actually deliver remains to be
seen. NASA’s Artemis programme
aims to put a man and a woman
on the moon in four years, and
Dittmar says that’s a challenging
goal. “I’ve never seen human spaceThe hope is to avoid potential
future disputes over the use of
materials extracted from the
moon, although China and
Russia – both major players in
space flight – haven’t signed up.Beyond NASA, in 2019 Trump
directed the creation of the US
Space Force, which was touted
as a new branch of the military.
“It’s like the army and the navy,
but for space, because we’re
spending a lot of money on space,”
he said. In reality, it is more of a
bureaucratic shuffle of existing
space command away from the
air force, army and navy branches
that housed them before.
The Trump administration
also set out to develop standards
around space traffic management,
cybersecurity issues for satellites
and launch regulations. “Some
of these will be implemented by
the end of the first presidential
term. There’s been more focus
on trying to address some of
these structural problems than
I remember in the past 20 years,”
says Dittmar. ❚TOM^ WILLIAMS/CQ-
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IMAGESNews Insight
Donald Trump has overseen
increasing conflict between the
US and China over technology.
One of the most high-profile
battles has been about the
video-sharing app TikTok, owned
by Chinese firm ByteDance.
Throughout 2020, Trump
raised concerns about the
potential for China’s government
to use the app to gather data
on people in the US. There is no
evidence that the app gathers
data other than what is collected
by other social media apps, andTikTok says it hasn’t received
requests from the Chinese
government to access data.
Still, in September, Trump
said he would ban the app along
with WeChat, owned by Chinese
company Tencent. The two
services are used by 100 million
people in the US. To avoid the ban,
TikTok has made an agreement
with US companies Oracle and
Walmart to share ownership
of the app. The deal must be
completed by mid-November
or the ban may still go through.The tech cold war
People in Washington DC
protest in support of the
Affordable Care Act (ACA)“ NASA’s Artemis
programme aims to put
a man and a woman on
the moon in four years”flight come in on time by anybody,
by any nation,” she says.
But NASA is moving forward
quickly. “This time, we are not
going alone, but with commercial
and international partners. To
meet these goals, this president
has called for historic increases in
NASA’s budget,” says Will Boyington
of the National Space Council.
On 13 October, eight countries
signed up to the US-proposed
Artemis Accords, which sets
out rules for lunar mining and
standards for sending both robots
and people to the moon’s surface.