Last week was the annual Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit extravaganza of science, law enforcement and anti‐pharma information in Atlanta. We had to miss it due to scheduling but would have loved to have been there. “This is the best summit ever,” Joseph Garbely, D.O., vice president of medical services and medical director of Caron, told us by phone. He had dinner with Kelly Clark, M.D., immediate past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (Garbely is now on the board), and a few other people, including Nora Volkow, M.D., head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and Robert Dupont, M.D., the first head of NIDA — as networking is a key draw of the event. He did say that treatment in general is underrepresented at the summit. What treatment needs to do more of is to show outcomes, he said. What he learned from this year's summit: “There is an amazing group of people who are committing to forwarding the science and the understanding that addiction is a chronic disease,” he said. “The energy is really positive.” However, we spoke to him before the speech given by President Trump, which was actually boycotted by some attendees. Geoffrey Laredo, formerly senior advisor at NIDA and now a principal at Santa Cruz Strategies, boycotted it, standing outside in the sunshine instead. “I am boycotting,” he said of the speech. “I am very pleased to be at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit. Impacting the addiction crisis in the U.S. — including the acute opioid overdose epidemic — still requires all of our hard work and ideas. As you know, I was very involved in this meeting for several years while at NIDA, and I'm glad to see the continued commitment and focus from the public health community. I am very concerned with this White House and its approach to the issue. We hear some good rhetoric and some awful, hurtful rhetoric. We see proposals to slash agency and program budgets that work directly on addiction prevention, treatment and recovery. What we don't see is a truly coordinated plan of the size, focus and scope that could make serious inroads into addiction in the U.S. We are very fortunate that Congress proposed and provided significant research funding to the National Institutes of Health to broaden its work in addiction. The HEALing Communities initiative and several other research efforts will undoubtedly yield results that will save lives.” Andrew Kessler, principal with Slingshot Solutions, had already flown from Atlanta back home to Washington, D.C., and watched the president's speech on the livestream (as did we). “Perhaps my biggest disappointment is that I did not hear the word ‘disease’ even once during the president's remarks,” Kessler told us afterward. “Until he — and those who work with him — understand and accept that addiction and substance use disorders are a disease, progress will be slow. To treat a disease the size and scope of this one, we need a strong public health response — and the bedrock of that response is Medicaid. Mr. Trump spent almost 80 percent of his speech offering his support for law enforcement. We all respect law enforcement, but it would have been nice to hear him offer his support for prevention, treatment and recovery professionals. They make just as many sacrifices, and get almost no recognition.” He added, “The president was effusive in his praise for drug‐sniffing dogs. They probably do a great job. Maybe one day SUD professionals will garner his adulation as well.” Jeff Quamme of the CCB didn't stick around for the speech either. “[Trump's] pattern of turning everything into a campaign stump, personal attack on his political enemies or flat‐out mistruths speaks volumes to me,” he told ADAW.