Kellyanne Conway stressed the need to take shame out of seeking recovery from opiate addiction Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
“Well first, you’re not alone. We see you. We hear you. And we’re with you,” Conway says to families and victims of addiction nationwide. “The best thing you can do is break through the stigma and the silence … This is a bigger killer now than cancer.”
President Trump, Conway said, is fully dedicated to stemming the flow of drugs into communities nationwide and assisting those who need those resources.
Conway said that the influx of opiates in the United States is not only a public health emergency, but an attack on kids and families. According to a 2018 JAMA Network study, in a span of about two decades, nearly 9,000 children and adolescents died from opioid poisonings.
“We’re trying to treat the whole person. And frankly the issue has been ignored for many years, and we’re not going to turn a blind eye to it,” Conway said. “It is truly the equivalent of an airplane falling from the sky everyday in American deaths. Think about that, because if an airplane was falling from the sky every single we would all stop and say ‘why are there airplanes falling from the sky?’”
