As a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, I never thought in a zillion years I would agree with anything Governor of New Jersey and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie is saying.
But what he’s saying — a sympathetic plea for us addicts — is groundbreaking.
In a video viewed more than eight million times on Facebook, we get a glimpse into the mind of a true compassionate conservative. It’s easy to talk the talk of a compassionate conservative (remember W?). It’s another thing to actually be one.
“I’m pro life,” Christie says in the video. “And I think that if you’re pro life, that means you gotta be pro life for the whole life. Not just the nine months you’re in the womb. The 16-year-old teenage girl on the floor of the county lockup addicted to heroin, I’m pro life for her too. Her life is just as much a precious gift from God. And we need to start thinking that way as a party and as a people.”
For too long, addicts have been marginalized in society, considered to be the scum of the earth and not actual human beings who need help.
In the video, Christie also talks about his mom, a lifelong smoker who started in 1948, at age 16. Then at age 71, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. According to Christie, she tried everything: nicotine gum, the patch, hypnosis, everything. She couldn’t quit.
“No one came to me and said, ‘Don’t treat her ‘cause she got what she deserved.’,” he said. “ No one came and said to me your mother was dumb, she started smoking [and] it was bad for her, and she kept doin’ it. So we’re not gonna give her chemotherapy, we’re not gonna give her radiation, you know why? ‘Cause she’s gettin’ what she deserves.”
“Yet somehow, if it’s heroin or cocaine or alcohol, we say eh, they decided. They’re gettin’ what they deserve.”
Even if Christie were a Democrat, this would be progressive thinking. He, rightly so, believes drug addiction is a disease. That it can happen to anyone.
Last week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Christie expounded on his statements.
“It cost us $49,000 a year to warehouse a prisoner in New Jersey state prisons last year,” Christie said. “A full year of inpatient drug treatment costs $24,000 a year.”
That’s a no-brainer. Send these addicts to rehab and help them become useful members of society again. Obama recently signed an executive order “banning the box,” or banning the use of a box to check on job applications if you have been convicted of a felony. That’s a step in the right direction and one that could help these potentially reformed addicts reenter the workforce.
“[People] are just one bad decision away from having their families ruined by heroin addiction, by prescription drug addiction,” Christie told Joe Scarborough. “I am gonna be the one president who takes the stigma away from this, the moral judgments away from it, and to help people families rebuild themselves… We need to stop judging and start giving them the tools they need to get better.”
So what of this new, tenderhearted version of Chris Christie? It’s a far cry from the bully persona he’s cultivated. It’s not the hot-tempered, bombastic governor of yore, who once called a reporter an idiot and told a heckler to “sit down and shut up.” What of the meanie who made statements saying the National Teachers Union needs “a punch in the face”? Or the jokester of Bridgegate (the scandal that involved the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge allegedly for political revenge)?
We’re hearing a different guy now. One who is sticking up for us addicts as human beings.
In the video, Christie also told the story of a friend and law school classmate.
The friend had everything in life. A prestigious job at a big law firm. The beautiful doctor wife. The three wonderful daughters. The expensive car. The great house. He was well-educated. Former editor of the Seton Hall Law Review.
Christie’s friend was in perfect shape. He used to run 12 miles a week. One time, in his early 40s, he hurt his back running and went to the doctor because his back pain was preventing him from working. The doctor said he’d get treatment, but also prescribed Percocet (a prescription painkiller) to help numb the pain.
A year later, Christie got a call from his friend’s wife saying her husband was addicted to Percocet. She kicked him out of the house. They all agreed to have an intervention for him. He was in and out of rehab for 10 years, during which time he lost his license to practice law — and even lost the right to see his three daughters.
“A year and a half ago on a Sunday morning, [we] got the call we’d been dreading forever,” Christie said. “That they found him dead with an empty bottle of Percocet and an empty quart of vodka.” Christie’s friend and former classmate had died at age 52.
“By every measure that we define success in this country, this guy had it,” Christie said. “He couldn’t get help. And he died.”
“It can happen to anyone. And so we need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them,” he continued. “We need to give them the tools they need to recover… And we need to stop judging.”
Although this may be the one issue I agree with him on, we need more politicians like Chris Christie who understand the intricacies of addiction and how to treat and prevent it. We need people who see addicts as individual human beings and not criminals. It’s one thing to be dealing drugs, it’s another to be consuming them. I never, ever thought I’d be smoking crack. But there I was, sitting in alleyways with homeless people doing it. Some people just have the predisposition to get higher and higher. So they take extreme measures when the socially acceptable substance of alcohol is not enough. It’s part of the disease.
I’m not a single-issue voter — though I do care very much about gay and transgender rights, gun safety, and income inequality — but if I was, I might take a look at Chris Christie. For now, as much as I’d like to see a woman president, I am leaning toward Bernie Sanders. #FeelTheBern
