J.D. Vance claims Biden’s policies nearly killed his mother

Lies like this kill 1,000s of Americans

In 2022, the newly minted MAGA of convenience, JD Vance, was running for the US Senate seat in Ohio. Long gone was his 2016 criticism of Trump. He needed the MAGA godhead’s blessing. To get in good with Trump, he embraced his insanely expensive, completely pointless border wall.

In a campaign ad, Vance appealed directly to the racism of Ohio’s conservative whites by embracing Trump’s folly.

“Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racists for wanting to build Trump’s wall. They censor us. But it doesn’t change the truth. Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

So far, Vance’s spiel was boilerplate Republican xenophobia and bullshit lies. The right-wing keeps whining about these illegal Democratic voters, but they can never produce any.

Then, to establish his ‘man of the people’ cred, this multi-millionaire made it personal.

“This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across the border. No child should grow up an orphan.”

He ends by meeting his legal obligation to own what he said. And he closes with white nationalist rhetoric.

I’m JD Vance. And I approve this message because whatever they call us we put America first.

It will surprise few to learn that the Republican Vance is lying about the cause of his mother’s drug addiction. Worse, in doing so he is promoting Republican policies on the opioid overdose catastrophe that will sentence thousands of Americans to unnecessary deaths should the GOP win in November.

A fair-minded reader might ask how we know Vance is lying. The answer is simple. He told us the truth in his autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy. In the book that enabled his political career, he described a different scenario. Vance wrote that his mother started by abusing alcohol. Then, as a nurse, she began stealing and using her patients’ prescription drugs.

This was in the mid-1990s. Decades before Biden was president. Even years before he was vice-president. 

In that era, the opioid problem was caused by American pharmaceutical companies pumping up profits by lying about the addictive effects of their drugs. While America’s leading pharmacy chains carved out their piece of the pie.

Further, in his speech at the RNC on Wednesday, he celebrated that in January 2025, his mother would be 10 years clean. Which means that she quit six years before Biden was sworn in.

There’s more. When the book came out in 2016, Vance blamed drug addiction on social and economic factors — not Democratic border policies. This means we should ask who was in charge in Kentucky and Ohio during his mother’s addiction years.

Before his political ambitions made him a serial liar, Vance was correct. Local factors are decisive in narcotic use. If the availability of drugs determined addiction rates, then drug use would be consistent across the country. The interstate highway system makes South Dakota as accessible to illegal drugs as West Virginia. Yet WV has a fatal overdose rate more than seven times higher than SD’s. 

West Virginia’s OD rate is even three times higher than California’s. And I doubt that drug dealers refuse to do business in Los Angeles. So it is not a supply issue. A fact that points to the truth. 

The bigger problem is that if Republicans take control, they will focus on stopping drugs at the border. It’s a visual strategy, full of vigor and virility, pleasing to the “solutions using guns” ethos of the MAGAverse. But as discussed above, it is an expensive boondoggle.

And while Republicans are wasting time and money they are not doing the thing that will make a difference. Focusing on the addict. Rehab saves lives. Threatening to invade Mexico to “take out” narcotraffickers will not. Anymore than trying to stop the supply of alcohol during prohibition lowered the rate of alcohol abuse.

Demand drives the market. When there are billions to be made supplying that demand, there will be an endless line of suppliers.

Vance can tell his receptive audience it is Democratic policies that kill mothers, sisters, and daughters. But that is a homicidal lie. It is Republican drug policies that create orphans.