Parents Beg Biden To End Government-Sponsored Drug Sites

A coalition that advocates for helping drug addicts recover from their afflictions is calling for Joe Biden to not have the federal government fund injection sites where people are allowed to inject and smoke drugs under the watch of state workers.

A series of mobile digital advertisements have been released by NorthAmericaRecovers.org, a nonprofit umbrella organization comprised of over 20 separate groups, including Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths. The ads feature references to Joe Biden’s self-admitted drug-addicted son, Hunter.

“Please help my son escape addiction the way you helped Hunter,” read an ad featuring a picture of a mother and her homeless drug addict son, “Stop government drug sites.”

The ad campaign’s reported purpose is to push Biden and the Justice Department to weigh if it truly makes sense for taxpayer money to be spent on “supervised drug consumption sites.”

“President Biden will soon be making a decision on whether or not to legalize drug consumption rooms, or supervised injection sites, where taxpayer-funded healthcare workers supervise anyone over the age of 18 to inject or smoke fentanyl and other hard drugs, under federal law,” the group wrote on its website. “These sites allow people to enter and use illicit drugs, presumably as a safe alternative to using drugs on the streets. There are currently a few operating in the US already (e.g., New York City), in a legal gray area.”

“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. This will entail allocating more sufficient funding to ensure access to evidence-based intervention, treatment, and recovery programs,” the group writes. “Funding drug consumption sites puts the cart before the horse—at a time when treatment and recovery services are not resourced to anywhere-near adequate levels— and shifts our focus away from a recovery-oriented policy that enables more people to get off drugs and reshape their lives.”

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has publicly argued that state-funded drug sites are “very important.”

Jacqui Berlinn, the mother whose son is seen in the ad, explained her passionate position against the taxpayer-funded shoot-up and smoking facilities, saying, “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.”

“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,” Berlinn said.

The “Who We Are” section of North America Recovers’ website describes the organization as “a nonpartisan coalition of community leaders, parents of the homeless, and recovering addicts seeking federal, state, and local actions that encourage recovery from—and end the enabling of—addiction, untreated mental illness, and homelessness.”