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This is directly addressed to white people who voted for Donald Trump, since much of the focus of his purported “sympathy” listening session with families who have lost a loved one due to the current opioid overdose crisis targeted white America. If you lost a loved one to opioids and happen not to be white, this is for you as well.
There’s no telling how much attention you pay to news about Trump’s international stances, particularly when you’re wrestling with grief and loss. But in case you missed this: he has given a shout-out of approval to the current president of the Philippines, Rodrigo "Rody" Roa Duterte, for the job he is doing dealing with the drug crisis in that country. Trump even invited him to visit the White House. Give the transcript of their phone call a read, or read this article titled “Senators From Both Parties Blast ‘Outrageous’ Trump Call Praising Duterte for Anti-Drug Killing Spree”:
Donald Trump’s praise for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous anti-drug campaign drew condemnation from leading foreign policy voices in both parties Wednesday, who were shocked the president would encourage what the State Department describes as “extrajudicial killings.”
The Intercept reported Tuesday that Trump told Duterte in a private call that he endorsed the murderous anti-drug campaign, which has killed well over 7,000 people. Duterte has unapologetically compared himself to Hitler and said he would “be happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts in the Philippines.
Trump talks a good game with his seemingly sympathetic promises. But as someone who has been coping with the impact of addiction on families both personally and professionally for many decades, I’d like to share something an old-timer in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) said to me more than 30 years ago:
“Sympathy is in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”
Trump’s words must match his deeds. Sympathy is useless. What is needed is empathy and positive budgetary action, and he has demonstrated neither. In fact the Duterte call, his budget proposals, and the pronouncement by his Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for harsher penalties for those convicted for drug offenses all combine to tell the true tale.
Let’s start with Duterte. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve been to thousands of 12-step meetings, met with the loved ones of addicts and alcoholics who attend support groups like Nar-Anon, have been in folks’ homes, and attended funerals for people who overdosed. My husband, who works at a supportive housing facility for the elderly and for addicts in treatment, comes home from work devastated when a client is found dead from an overdose. It happens far too frequently.
Picture it if you can: your son, daughter, spouse, parent, or neighbor being dragged out of their home and shot. No arrest. No treatment. Their crime? Suffering from addiction—which we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is not a moral failing. It is a disease.
The Duterte drug treatment program is death.
Like those of you who voted for Trump, this woman in the Philippines supported Duterte. Now that she has lost her husband to a Duterte death squad, she is speaking out.
From Human Rights Watch:
On June 30, he instructed the Philippine public, “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.” These calls could constitute criminal incitement to commit murder.
Imagine your next-door neighbor, who knows that your son Jimmy is addicted to heroin. He rounds up his gun-owning buddies at the bar and forms an unofficial junkie shootin’ party—approved of by the president.
Can’t happen here, you say? The U.S. has a long history of vigilantism. Think that’s an exaggeration? Okay. So why does Donald Trump think it is a-okay for it to happen in the Philippines? It says a lot about his thought processes and moral failings.
So maybe this doesn’t bother you at all. The Philippines are far away, and who cares if their head honcho wants to kill off a bunch of “losers,” as Trump would phrase it. He probably had good reasons that have nothing to do with 7,000 (more or less) dead addicts and low-level drug dealers.
Let’s get down to the real nitty gritty: money. The bottom line in all government actions and efforts is the budget. In early May, Mother Jones had this story titled “Trump Budget Would Slash Funds for Office Fighting Opioid Epidemic: The Office of National Drug Control Policy is facing a 95 percent budget cut.”
The White House is calling for a 95 percent funding cut for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the agency leading the charge against the country's opioid epidemic, according to sources knowledgeable about the White House's draft budget for the coming fiscal year. ONDCP is responsible for coordinating drug prevention programs across federal agencies and was slated to fund President Donald Trump's much-lauded opioid commission.
The budget would slash ONDCP's $380 million budget to $24 million. It would eliminate the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which coordinates local, state, and national efforts to reduce drug trafficking and has a $250 million annual budget. It would also cut the Drug-Free Communities Support Program, which funds community-based youth substance abuse prevention programs. The budget calls both programs "duplicative of other Federal programs." The budget is a "passback" draft: it was cleared by the White House budget office last week, but will still need to be approved by Congress.
From Vox, we have “Trump’s budget makes it official: he’s doing little to nothing about the opioid epidemic.”
Trump also proposes a 47 percent cut to Medicaid over the next 10 years. This would rob millions of people of the one affordable source of health insurance that they have — to pay for, in part, drug treatment. According to a 2014 study by Truven Health Analytics researchers, Medicaid paid for a quarter, or $7.9 billion of $31.3 billion, of projected public and private spending for drug treatment in 2014. As a patient using Medicaid to pay for drug addiction care at a New Jersey facility told me earlier this year, “If it wasn’t for insurance, I wouldn’t be here.”
The budget further asks for nearly $400 million in cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, hundreds of millions in cuts to mental health block grants, and billions in cuts altogether to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This funding didn’t all go specifically to drug treatment, but these agencies and programs in part help address the opioid epidemic and drug addiction in general.
These budget proposals have prompted swift reactions from affected Trump voters, like this one profiled in “Trump's budget dismays rural New York man, others hit by drug addiction crisis”:
He slept next to his son's ashes most nights back when Kraig Moss first met Donald Trump.
In a hall packed with Iowa voters, the presidential candidate looked the middle-aged truck driver visiting from upstate New York in the eye and vowed to fight the opioid crisis that killed his only son two years earlier.
"He promised me, in honor of my son, that he was going to combat the ongoing heroin epidemic," Moss said of the January 2016 interaction. "He got me hook, line and sinker."
Moss, an amateur musician, quickly sold enough possessions to fund a months-long tour of more than 40 Trump rallies, where he serenaded voters with pro-Trump songs. His guitar, and the ashes of his late 24-year-old son, Rob, were always close by.
"I had everything riding on the fact that he was going to make things better," Moss said. "He lied to me."
You may question why this essay singles out white Trump voters who are coping with the impact of opiates on their families. Well, for the last few years the emphasis on how this new epidemic is “white” seems to be in the media every day.
Here are a few examples:
“In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs.”
“The War on Drugs Is Too Harsh For White Users.”
The story below is about Ross County, Ohio.
If I had a dollar for every article posted and every Republican politician acting like they care about addicts these days—‘cause they’re white—I’d be rich.
Don’t get me wrong: since I’m a staunch advocate for sane addiction policy, harm reduction, and drug treatment, I won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater by rejecting those who finally are willing to help addicts. I’ve written previously about the overdose epidemic and what we can do about it .
But I will admit that I am pretty pissed off that for decades addicts who are black and brown have been cast into the role of horrid thugs and criminals, whose fate seems to consist of getting locked up and dying.
Remember this scene from The Godfather?
Don Zaluchi: I, too, don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra to stay away from that sort of stuff, but someone comes along saying, I've got powders where if you put up a three to four thousand dollar investment, you can make fifty thousand distributing, then there is no way to resist it. I want to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools. I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we'd keep the traffic to the Dark People, the Coloreds - they're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.
Yeah. Well, I’m one of those dark people. Ekow Yankah speaks to how I feel.
Faced with a rising national wave of opioid addiction and its consequences, families, law enforcement and political leaders around the nation are linking arms to save souls. But 30 years ago, it was a different story. Ekow Yankah, a Cardozo School of Law professor, reflects on how race affects our national response to drug abuse.
Read his op-ed in the New York Times, titled “When Addiction Has a White Face.”
Yes, it’s a fact that few white Trump voters are reading Daily Kos. However, there are scads of readers here who have talked about either their own addiction and recovery process or the situation of members of their families. Readers here have shared that family members voted for Trump.
Next time you make it to a meeting or someone in your family does, you or they can do this—raise your hand to share and when called on, say something along these lines:
“Hi I’m Ann and I’m very worried about the proposed cuts to funding for treatment/rehab … and I’d like some people to go with me to talk to our congressional representative and senators about this. If you can’t go, you can call. I have the numbers … talk to me after the meeting.
Thank you for letting me share.”
I realize that traditionally 12-step groups follow AA in not endorsing or opposing any causes. However, members are allowed to discuss anything which may affect their sobriety or that of a loved one.
If you, your son, daughter, or spouse can’t afford to go to detox or rehab or get mental health services, what are the chances of getting clean or staying clean?
Obviously, there are other recovery support groups which aren’t based on the 12 steps, and this isn’t a discussion of what does or doesn’t work. But the fact is that membership in any of them numbers in the millions. And there is an addiction treatment lobby that advocates the same way that AARP lobbies Congress on behalf of older folks.
If you feel you can’t share about this during a meeting, you certainly do so after the meeting, over coffee, or at a family gathering.
Whatever works. Because sympathy ain’t gonna do shit.
Action is the only answer—so contact your Congress critter, and talk to the addicts you know along with their loved ones.
And remember that addiction is an equal-opportunity destroyer.
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