Mothers Of Homeless Addicts — And New North American Coalition — Launch Emotional Ad Campaign Urging Biden to “Stop Government Drug Sites” And “Help My Son Escape Addiction The Way You Helped Hunter”.

For Immediate Release. Contact Trevor Fitzgibbon, (704) 775-0487, TrevorFG@protonmail.com

 January 23, 2023. Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths and 21 other organizations focused on addiction, mental illness, and homelessness are urging President Biden to “Stop Government Drug Sites” and order the Department of Justice not to grant Philadelphia and other cities, which are seeking waivers so they can operate supervised drug-use sites without violating federal law.

 The coalition is launching an advertising campaign on Monday, January 23, 2023 in Washington, D.C. with mobile billboards with a photo of a mother of a homeless fentanyl addict that reads, “Please Help My Son Escape Addiction the Way You Helped Hunter.” 

 The ads are aimed at convincing Biden and his Department of Justice (DoJ) to not allow “supervised drug consumption sites,” where taxpayer-funded healthcare workers assist anyone over 18 to inject or smoke fentanyl and other hard drugs. In response to a lawsuit by a group in Philadelphia that wants to open a drug-use site, the Justice Department said in early December that it would decide by early February.

 “We as a coalition urge President Biden to reject these sites in favor of first creating a recovery-focused system for addressing our addiction crisis,” the Coalition said in a statement on the organization’s new website, NorthAmericaRecovers.org. “This means we must allocate sufficient funding for evidence-based intervention, treatment, and recovery programs.” 

 Jacqui Berlinn, one of the co-founders of the organization and is featured in the advertisement issued the following statement.

My name is Jacqui Berlinn and it’s my face on the ads that are running in Washington D.C., urging President Joe Biden not to legalize government drug sites.

 The reason I’m doing this is because I’m afraid that if Biden legalizes these so-called “supervised drug use sites,” he will consign my son, and millions like him, to a life of addiction and homelessness.

 I did not make this decision lightly. Doing so brings up painful emotions, mainly sadness and anger. But I feel an obligation to speak out in defense of my son and others like him.

 The U.S. needs an addiction care system whose goal is recovery from addiction, not enabling addiction. We reduced cigarette smoking by eliminating special places for people to smoke, not by creating them. People recover from addiction in rehab clinics, not in bars.

 President Biden is actively considering denying my son the care that he rightly fought for years for his son Hunter to receive. Today, Hunter is in recovery from his years-long alcohol and cocaine addiction.

 Does President Biden believe that Hunter would have been better off today had the city of Los Angeles sent him to a government drug use site instead of rehab?

 There may one day be a role for such sites. Sites like them exist in some foreign countries, including Netherlands and Portugal. But those nations have systems that get addicts into treatment and recovery; they don’t enable addiction.

 I believe Biden will do the right thing when he looks into his heart and considers that he must treat my son and others like him in the same way he treated Hunter: with steadfast commitment to recovery, not a lifetime of addiction.

 In the photo in the advertisement, I am protesting San Francisco’s supervised drug consumption site with other members of our Mothers group, in January last year. Our protest led Mayor London Breed in June to announce she would close down the site, which she did in December. And our protests helped encourage Governor Gavin Newsom to veto the legalization of government drug sites across California.

 It’s time for a change. It’s time for Biden to publicly declare that he will not legalize government drug dens and instead will build the addiction recovery system that America needs.

 One of the laws Biden is considering not enforcing is a 1986 “crackhouse statute,” which Biden cosponsored as Senator, and which made it illegal to “knowingly open, lease, rent, use or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing or using any controlled substance.”

###

North America Recovers is running this ad on billboards in Washington, DC, which features Jacqui Berlinn of Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths.