North Carolina effort to combat a deadly drug addiction epidemic will be critically harmed if congressional Republicans and the Trump administration kill former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Governor Roy Cooper said.

Cooper made the prediction as a member of President Trump’s commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the drug crisis.

“We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think that what is happening over in Congress regarding issues on health care matters to this issue,” Cooper said in his opening remarks at the meeting, held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House. “If we make it...more expensive for people to get health care coverage, it’s going to make this crisis worse.”

The North Carolina Senate is a Republican Senate and it is working on to compromise legislation after the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill, the American Health Care Act, narrowly passed the House of Representatives last month.

Representative, Robert Pitteger, R-N.C., a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee’s steering committee, accused Cooper of using the opioid crisis “to try and score political points.”

“Over the past year, I have worked in bipartisan fashion to help pass 18 bills addressing the opioid epidemic, including new tools for law enforcement, a pilot program to help babies born with complications, and $1 billion in state grants,” Pittenger said Friday.

According to data, North Carolina is at the epicenter of the drug battle. The state experienced a 73% surge in the drugs related deaths between 2005 and 2015.

The powerful prescription pain killers were responsible for 1,100 deaths in the state in 2015, up from 642 a decade before, according to state figures.

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