Newly-nominated Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has made his mother’s battle with opioid addiction part of his public history and launched a nonprofit organization in 2017 to combat the scourge.
But earlier this year, the Ohio Republican senator voted against an anti-fentanyl bill he co-authored. When asked why, Vance’s office said it was because the senator he did not want to vote for $60 billion in support for Ukrainewhich is under attack by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Does this mean that it was more important for Vance to oppose supporting Ukraine than to combat fentanyl in states with a huge opioid problem, such as Ohio?
Vance’s office did not respond to repeated questions. Some critics, however, say Vance has taken several positions that have been convenient for Putin, while others say the GOP vice presidential nominee has not been earnest about fighting opioids.
Vance published his memoirs, Elegy for the Peasantssummer of 2016. He described growing up in Middletown in southwest Ohio, his mother’s drug and family problems, and spending time with his more stable grandmother in eastern Kentucky.
The book purports to speak for a enormous group of left-behind Americans. And when Donald Trump won the presidential election in a stunning landslide four months after its publication, many of the loquacious classes turned to it and its author to learn what they had missed in the disaffected masses.
A year later, Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, announced he was returning to Ohio to address the problems of communities oppressed by the sense that the only way to get ahead was to flee—to a place where opportunity really existed. IN March 16, 2017, New York Times EditorialVance described life in Silicon Valley.
““It’s sad that we live in a world where everyone feels like their life will be better if you come from a world where many rightly believe things have gotten worse,” he wrote. “And I suspected that this optimism blinded many in Silicon Valley to the real struggles in other parts of the country. That’s why I decided to come home to Ohio.”
Vance did not mention ambitions to run for political office, but wrote in his column that he was “starting an organization to combat the opioid epidemic in Ohio.”
He ultimately ran for office and began his political career in 2023 with a senior position in the U.S. Senate. After taking office, Vance continued to raise concerns about fentanyl.
“When we talk about fentanyl trafficking, I’m very concerned that we’re always… a few years behind what’s actually happening in our country,” Vance said during Hearing in January Senate Banking Committee. “And I think about my own, very personal experience with opioid addiction in my family. Ten years ago, everybody was talking about prescription painkillers. But of course, ten years ago, prescription painkillers were giving way to street heroin. Then five years ago, everybody was talking about street heroin, but heroin was giving way to fentanyl, and now, of course, everybody’s talking about fentanyl.”
When Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown authored Repel the Fentanyl LawVance signed on as a co-sponsor. The bill, which took effect in April, declares the crisis a national emergency, creates modern powers to disrupt money laundering and distribution networks and creates modern sanctions.
But before the measure was finally put to a vote, Vance changed his mind. His office said Spectrum News 1 that the senator could not support the allocation of $60 billion to defend Ukraine against Putin’s invasion, which was part of the package, and therefore could not vote “yes.”
Vance said he opposes supporting Ukraine because there is no capacity push Russia back beyond Ukraine’s pre-invasion borders. But Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations told the Capital Journal that simply cutting off support and ordering Ukraine to negotiate would only to embolden Putin.
And Bill Browder, one of Putin’s main enemies, said that Vance’s position on support for Ukraine is justified very similar to the Russian authoritarian.
In any case, Vance has put the halt to Ukraine support ahead of at least one front in the domestic fight against fentanyl, and his office would not comment on why. A political opponent said one reason is that Vance has never really cared about the fentanyl scourge.
His vote on the bill is: ““completely consistent with the fact that J.D. Vance has never been concerned about protecting Ohioans from addiction to fentanyl or opioids,” said Justin Barasky, a national Democratic political consultant who managed Brown’s 2018 re-election campaign. Vance “launched his political career by exploiting the fact that Ohio had a earnest (opioid) problem. He founded a fraudulent organization that he claimed was going to address the crisis. It didn’t spend a single dollar on treatment, and instead hired political consultants, did a poll, and even brought in a woman who was a spokeswoman for huge pharma. So the vote was completely consistent with his past actions.”
The nonprofit Barasky mentioned was called Our Ohio Renewal.
The group has faced criticism for hiring a doctor on annual stay who has long questioned the role of pharmaceutical opioids in fueling the epidemic of illegal opioids such as heroin and fentanyl. She also worked for the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that received significant financing from Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.
Some of the doctor’s claims were based on research funded by the opioid maker, ProPublica reported. In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty The New York Times reports that the company has been charged with a crime of misleading regulators about the addictive nature of its products.
In addition, Our Ohio Renewal’s largest expense went to Vance Chief Political AdvisorAccording to Business Insider.
Whatever his motives, Vance’s actions on the FEND Off Fentanyl Act show he has prioritized blocking aid to Ukraine over combating fentanyl, said University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven. He said he finds that misleading.
“You’re a U.S. senator from Ohio, and you have a lot of battles to fight in Ohio, which is economically lagging behind the country, and you’re at the forefront” of stopping aid to Ukraine, Niven said. “You have a political message that’s your whole reason for existing, and yet thwarting efforts to help Ukraine wins the day in what you do and what you say.”
