JD Vance’s rhetoric, and record, on the opioid epidemic

JD Vance says he’s grown all too accustomed to hearing a certain phrase when his family calls to catch him up on life in small-town Ohio: “They died of an overdose.”

The phrase, which Vance invoked Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention as he accepted his party’s nomination for vice president, is in keeping with the political identity he has cultivated since the 2016 publication of his famous memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Under the Biden presidency and Democratic power, “prices soared, dreams were shattered, and China and the cartels sent fentanyl across the border adding addiction to the heartache,” Vance told RNC attendees in Milwaukee on Wednesday night.

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