Summary

Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., despite his history of heroin addiction, supports ending a $56 million federal Narcan distribution program that helped drive a nearly 24% drop in U.S. overdose deaths in 2024.

The program, administered by SAMHSA, trained over 66,000 people and distributed 282,500 kits.

Critics warn that cutting Narcan funding could reverse life-saving progress, especially as fentanyl-related overdoses persist.

Kennedy argues the crisis requires deeper societal change beyond “nuts and bolts” solutions, while public health advocates condemn the move as dangerously premature.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Sure - addiction can fuck anyone.

    Some of us can afford rehab though. And it’s especially fucked when someone can afford rehab, benefits from it, and then turns around to deny others help.

    If RFK Jr left his addiction with a sense of empathy for the people who don’t have family members who will quietly cover up when one of your relatives kills someone while driving drunk, that would be a different story.

    I am not empathic to rich addicts. The fact that my stepdad was able to get weekend jail on his 5th DUI and used me and my siblings to start his car - while a schizophrenic who self medicates with opioids in my state will be killed in jail - nah, fuck them with a rusty pole and no tetanus shot.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      47 minutes ago

      i think the heroin+brainworms permanantly damaged his brain, like how benzos damaged J petersons brain when he went to russia to go into a medically induced coma.

    • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 hours ago

      It is especially fucked and hypocritical. He is a piece of shit. I already addressed that.

      But it doesn’t change a thing about addiction. Wealth does not prevent addiction. Access to rehab does not prevent addiction. Wealthy addicts aren’t any more or less moral failures than their impoverished counterparts.

      Wealthy addict hypocrites are moral failures and worthy of ridicule. But perpetuating the falsehood that addiction itself is a moral failing - that the only reason a wealthy person becomes an addict is because they are weak - that has just as much impact on the impoverished as it has on the wealthy.

      When you claim that poverty is the only moral justification for addiction, you directly hurt the impoverished addict - you limit the nature of their addiction to nothing more than a product of their environment. If they just had money, they wouldn’t be an addict. That is wrong.