Republicans Talk About Substance Abuse on the Campaign Trail

A number of Republican presidential candidates are talking about substance abuse on the campaign trail, according to The Washington Post. They are telling personal stories that are gaining a lot of media attention.

Jed Bush last week told The Huffington Post about his daughter Noelle’s struggle with drug addiction. “She went through hell,” he said. Ted Cruz told CNN he tried to save his half sister from a crack house. Chris Christie spoke about his law school friend’s drug addiction. “By every measure we define success, this guy had it,” Christie said. “He’s a drug addict. But he couldn’t get help. And he’s dead.”

During the Republican presidential debate in September, Carly Fiorina spoke about how she and her husband “buried a child to drug addiction.” She added, “Drug addiction is an epidemic, and it is taking too many of our young people. I know this sadly from personal experience.”

The candidates’ talk about the personal side of drug addiction reflects a growing shift in the way Americans think about addiction, the article notes. A majority of Americans think the government should focus more on providing treatment for people arrested for drugs instead of prosecuting them, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey.

Republican candidate Ben Carson has a different view of drug addiction than many of his fellow candidates, according to Bloomberg News. On Sunday, when asked on CBS’s Face the Nation what causes drug addiction and how it should be treated, he responded, “Usually addictions occur in people who are vulnerable, who are lacking something in their lives. We have to really start asking ourselves, what have we taken out of our lives in America? What are some of those values and principles that allowed us to ascend the ladder of success so rapidly to the very pinnacle of the world and the highest pinnacle anyone else had ever reached, and why are we in the process of throwing away all of our values and principles for the sake of political correctness?”