'Damn shameful': J.D. Vance met with uproar as questionable speech claims debunked

Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican former President Donald Trump has picked as his running mate, was shamed this week for the questionable claim that undocumented immigrants caused his mother's addiction to drugs.

An X community note was added Wednesday to a Vance 2022 campaign ad called "Are you a racist?" in which he suggested undocumented people were the lone source of the narcotics that took over his mother's life.

"I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border," Vance says. "Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country."

The simple narrative Vance presents in his ad is challenged by the context of his mother's descent into addiction.

While Bev Vance ultimately did find herself addicted to heroin, which a 2022 White House report notes comes primarily from criminal organizations in Mexico, her substance abuse problems began with alcohol, multiple reports show.

The gateway between the two substances appears in a Washington Post report about Vance's "radicalization" that was published the same year as Vance's ad.

It notes Vance's mother "worked regularly as a nurse until she started stealing prescription narcotics and getting high."

Bev Vance's prescription opioid habit developed in the mid-1990s, about the same time the Food and Drug Administration approved Purdue Pharma's OxyContin and triggered an opioid crisis that plagues the nation to this day.

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It's that context referenced in this week's Community Note, which reads, "Vance’s mother utilized her position as a nurse to steal prescribed medication from her patients, not because of undocumented immigrants."

And it was that context that outraged X users who viewed the ad and challenged its message.

"Damn shameful," replied X user @AspieJames.

"Even without the lie, this ad was disgusting," wrote @ChristinaKilis.

"This tells us exactly who he is," wrote X user Sandy. "He runs with the hares and the hounds."

Another X user reminded readers of criticism Vance faced for a failed nonprofit for people with opioid addictions that "didn’t spend one nickel on anybody," as a political opponent argued in 2022.

"Bold talk coming from a man who set up a fake charity to 'help those affected by the opioid crisis,'" replied Jesse Denney, "and then used all of the proceeds to fund his Senatw [sic] campaign instead of, you know... helping people."

A New York Times report notes, "Some of the nonprofit group’s own workers said they had drawn a different conclusion: They had been lured by the promise of helping Ohio, but instead had been used to help Mr. Vance start his career in politics."

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