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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to do a different kind of calling now. If you have an addiction, and we're watching the first presidential debate, we'll set it up this way and then I'll invite you in with the call-in question, but if you are watching the first presidential debate and you have an addiction problem, you might think the president of the United States thinks you're a loser. Trump attacked Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden for having a "drug problem." Here's a little bit of that exchange again.

President Trump: Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged for-

Joe Biden: That's not true. He wasn't dishonorably discharged.

Trump: - cocaine use. He didn't have a job until you became vice-president. Once you became vice president, he made a fortune in Ukraine and China and Moscow and various other places.

Biden: That is simply not true.

Biden: He made a fortune and he didn't have a job.

Biden: My son like a lot of people at home had a drug problem. He's overtaken it. He's fixed it. He's worked on it and I'm proud of him, I'm proud of my son.

Trump: Why was he even--

Brian: It's that last part that we're interested in for this segment. Never mind the politics. It's Joe Biden saying, "I'm proud of him. I'm proud of my son." A lot of people have a drug problem in their homes. After the debate, President Trump's son, Donald Jr. doubled down on the attack, calling Hunter Biden, the crackhead during an appearance on Glenn Beck's right-wing talk show.

Donald Jr.: You don't think they would use that over crackhead Hunter? You don't think that we need leverage over Joe Biden?

Brian: Now national data are incomplete, but available information suggests US drug overdose deaths are on track to reach an all-time high this year. Addiction experts blame the pandemic, which has left people isolated and depressed. In desperate times like these shame and stigma can be a death sentence. 75% of people struggling with addiction never seek treatment. A lot of those barriers are financial, but another reason people don't seek treatment is shame, the feeling that you don't deserve help because you're a loser.

The opposite of shame is pride. Vice-president Biden in that clip used that word "proud" to describe his son, not in spite of his struggles, but because of them. I want to open up the phones now, not to do Biden versus Trump, but for anyone with loved ones currently struggling with addiction. Let's take a moment and talk about how

there for them and how you're proud of them. 646-435-7280.

It’s a really hard time for anyone right now, but it's especially difficult for those battling addictions. Do you want to do this? Anybody want to call in and tell your loved one that you're here for them, that you're proud not of the disease, but of the person you know, and that even with an addiction they're worthy of love? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Do you have a friend or family member, spouse, partner, whoever you want to shout out. No names required. 646-435-7280.

Of course, for all the love and acceptance we can give our loved ones about addiction, as individuals, the fact remains that people writing the laws, from the President to Biden himself when he was in Congress, whoever, have historically been less understanding and punitive. We also want to hear from you, if you've dealt with the receiving end of our punitive drug laws in this country, what's your experience, and what would make those better? 646-435-7280.

Here with me now to help take your calls is Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national non-profit that works to end the war on drugs. Kassandra, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC today.

Kassandra Frederique: Thank you, Brian, and thank you to you and your shelf of making space for this conversation.

Brian: First, I wonder if you saw that debate exchange and the Biden pride moment beyond the policy moment jumped out at you?

Kassandra: Listening to it again when you just played it, I got choked up because I think that it was the most relatable moment in the conversation, for me and for so many other people. I think it is telling people how much we love them, not just around addiction. I'm here in New York and our governor said during this really tough time of COVID-19 to remind the people around you that you love them. I think that that moment for me represented addiction, but it also represented the global crisis we're in right now.

Brian: Can I jump in on that, because we have Cuomo clip. Let's see if this is the same thing that you're referring to. Here's the governor.

Gov. Cuomo: The police have to do their job and they have to arrest people who deserve to be arrested. If somebody is openly injecting drugs on a city street, they should be arrested.

Brian: That wasn't exactly the expression of love. Here's Joe Biden though in relation to that.

Biden: I'm offering $20 billion to states to change their state laws, to eliminate minimum mandatories, and set up drug courts. No one should be going to jail because they have a drug problem. They should be going to rehabilitation, not to jail. 

Brian: Never mind the contrast between Biden and Trump. There's a contrast between Biden and Cuomo. It sounds like the governor's talking about the police.

He's talking about drug courts, people being sentenced to rehab.

Kassandra: I think there's a lot of stuff happening in those clips. I want to go back to what we started with, which was Biden clip and talking about how he was prideful of his son, who was navigating addiction, and how he was prioritizing his love and the humanity of his son over the cheap shots around the person's struggle with addiction.

Then contrasting that, I think it was actually a good contrast between what Cuomo was talking about, about how people deserve to be arrested, that this is what people who use drugs deserve, deserve criminalization. That is actually the opposite of what we know is helpful for people. We know that people need resources and they need support to navigate through addiction and we know that criminalization only exacerbates the challenges that people who use drugs navigate.

I also want to say it's really important for us to understand what Vice-President Joe Biden is saying in this clip as well, where he's saying people don't deserve to be arrested. I agree. Drug Policy Alliance, Drug Policy Action, we agree. People should not be arrested for drugs. Where we disagree is the idea that we can navigate addiction within the criminal legal system.

The drug court model is the criminal legal system. It is different than jail and prison, yes, but it is still the criminal legal system and as someone who is a social worker and has the social work debt to prove it, I understand that that is kicking the can down the road and it is not the new approach that we need for people who use drugs. I think it's really about understanding that love does not always equal control. That love is about providing people support.

As we center humanity and as we center love in our family and loved ones, we have to recognize that part of what we have to do is give people the support so they can make choices for themselves, because coercing people into treatment is not effective and it's also not love.

Brian: Where's the line for you in that between support and enabling, people use that word enabling. Like when Biden talks about Hunter Biden, he's expressing pride as well as love, but I think he put it in the context of Hunter having kicked his drug habit. What about when somebody is going through it? Where is that line between, if you can even identify this in a short radio show answer, that line between support and enabling?

Kassandra: We work with family groups around the country that are trying to navigate this line and it is not easy and every day is a different set of choices that families make. I don't try to pretend or to purport, to tell families to do their own things because my own family struggles with this line as well. What I would offer is that I find that the word of enabling is limiting and doesn't always give us a full bevy of options. I think families are consistently having conversations with themselves and their loved ones who are struggling with what keeps everyone safe in the relationship.

I think that we have to talk about safety as opposed to enabling. People are going to make the choices that they make, but we know that all those choices are difficult and that you can't make good choices out of shame and stigma. I think that those are the things that as families that we're all navigating, that I know my uncles are navigating with their own kids. It's like, how do we support our loved ones, our sons, our daughters, that cousin, and keep everyone safe in the situation, emotionally safe as well.

I think that enabling comes from this really hard doctrine of tough love, and I don't believe in that concept. I think that that concept really is an extension of our world of criminalization, incarceration, and carceral strategies, and stigma and punishment. I think love is not supposed to hurt, and that love is not supposed to hurt in any instance, including navigating the addiction of a loved one.

Brian: Yes. Such an interesting and important way to enter that space that's really opposing American impulses, opposing human impulses to shame and criminalize drug use or to not shame, to love, to support. Sometimes those impulses can exist in the same country, the same family, even in the same person and be difficult to sort out. Let's take a phone call. Liz, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Liz.

Liz: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I know this segment was about-- You asked for people whose family or loved ones are currently struggling with addiction. My brother lost his battle with addiction last year.

Brian: I'm so sorry.

Liz: I wanted to call in-- thank you-- to both say something that I'm very proud of, that he did during his life. Also, discuss something that he said during the end of his battle with addiction that I think might help humanize people with addiction problems, and maybe help remind people to make space to show the compassion for people with addiction.

My brother, for his entire professional life, was a social worker. He spent 10 years with an organization in Northwest Indiana, just outside of Chicago, working with adults who have a mild and severe mental disability. He, later in his career, switched from working with those adults to working with fathers who had recently been released from prison, to try to get them to a place where they could regain custody of their children and be able to participate in their children's lives.

I'm really proud of him for all the people that he worked with, and helped during his life. Something he said at the very end of his struggle when he was in rehab was that it was really important to him that-- excuse me.

Brian Lehrer: It's all right if it's hard. It's okay.

Liz: He said that was really important to him that he be thought of as a professional because he had worked the part of these things in a career where there's a lot of social workers and health care workers more broadly who are consistently around people with difficulties and around drugs, and they find themselves struggling with addiction problems. I just thought that that bit, that it was so important to him that he

be thought of as professional and be remembered as professional--

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you got to say that out loud. Kassandra, you were verbally nodding there. Did you want to enter?

Kassandra: Yes. I just want to offer that your brother was absolutely a professional as much as he was someone who was struggling with addiction. I find that the narrative so much and what we heard in the clip of Donald Trump's son, Donald Jr. saying. When people struggle with addiction, we shrink their whole lives to that problem, but they are always whole human being, no matter when they struggle with addiction, and that their addiction should not define every part in humanity.

It's incredibly important that we remember that, and it's one of the things that makes policymaking so difficult, because we make policies for individual problems, but are not holistically dealing with people. Your point around people in helping professions, navigating such hard human complexities every single day, my heart is like pulling as someone who was also a social worker, and the very challenges that helping professionals, doctors, nurses, and people in care professions are having to deal with vicarious trauma. When they struggle with addiction, those same caring professions, cast them out, stigmatize them, take away their identity, take away their agency, as opposed to being the place where they can provide help like they've done for so many others.

Brian: Liz, thank you so much for the courage to call in and say what you said, and sorry again for your loss. Elena in Montclair, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elena.

Elena: Hi. I wanted to make sure that I say out loud and on the radio that people that struggle with addiction, they generally don't go through it alone. There are family members that love them and support them and are hurt by them feeling alone and the pain that they go through, and the journey that they go through. My family has experienced it in many different arms of my family.

I'm very proud of my brother through everything he's been through. It has definitely been something that we've struggled with together apart. It's not a good system that we have where we put people down because they have an illness. We don't do that with other illnesses, but somehow, people think that it's okay to do that with addiction, and it's not.

The more support we give our loved ones when they go through addiction, the better they can manage it and triumph through it, and the healthier as a family unit can be together. They're really wonderful organizations that I wanted to shout out like the National Alliance For Mental Illness, they have a lot of support for addiction and for mental illnesses, which are often happening at the same time. I wanted to make sure that I share that with everyone.

Brian: Elena, thank you so much for that. Alex in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex.

Alex: Hi, how are you?

Brian: Okay, thank you.

Alex: Sorry, forgive me for my nerves.

Brian: It's all right.

Alex: Just wanted to call [inaudible 00:17:49] makes drug addiction in my family primarily with my brother right now as we suffer [inaudible 00:18:00] lost [inaudible 00:18:02] because of addiction when we [inaudible 00:18:05] services that were really available [inaudible 00:18:08] to my brother.

Brian: Your line is breaking up so badly. I don't know if you can position yourself in a way to keep it stable, people are having a hard time hearing.

Alex: Is this any better?

Brian: I think so.

Alex: Okay. Yes, just the transition from childhood abuse and watched the loss of our parents to addiction and have that [inaudible 00:18:36] a really nasty comment from brother now as [inaudible 00:18:41] to addiction and homelessness. Because of limited resources all the time, decisions fall on me, like do I offer my [inaudible 00:18:54] poor knowing that that's going to addiction or do I--

Brian: I'm going to have to keep it short because we're still having problems with your line, but when those kinds of decisions do fall to you, Alex, do you find yourself struggling with the tension between judgment and love or pride and shame towards your brother? Anything like that?

Alex: Yes, it's a lot of struggle between compassion and tough love, and compassion and enabling.

Brian: Alex, thank you so much, and good luck to your whole family. One more before we run out of time in this segment. Alexandra in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alexandra.

Alexandra: Hi, Brian. First-time caller, longtime listener, I thank you so much. In May I received the worst news of my life that my brother passed away from his battle with his heroin addiction, and it's been an extremely hard road. It's been almost six months. My brother was an amazing, lovely person. Charlotte, you were right, like those who struggle with addiction should not have their whole life defined through what they battled with. He was the most beautiful, amazing, and loving person. What made me so angry when Trump said what he said during the debate was tha-- anybody like, especially with how much he has touted his record on battling the opioid crisis, no one who's ever had truly felt the effects of a loved one suffering from addiction would ever dream of using that as a low blow against another person that they know whose family has struggled.

What made me so angry-- again, I loved my brother so much, but he and I did not see eye to eye on politics, but he loved Donald Trump. I just kept thinking to myself,

like, what would Donald Trump think of how my brother passed away? Would he think that-- Would he used that if Donald Trump and I were in a debate together, would he used that as a low blow against me?

Brian: What do you think your brother would have thought about Trump saying that or his son going on TV afterwards and calling Hunter Biden a crackhead using that term? Would have flipped your brother politically?

Alexandra: That's the thing, Brian. I feel that it would just put him in a further state of denial because I think what ultimately led to my brother's passing was pride. He didn't want to admit he had a problem. You have the president of the United States just basically stigmatizing addiction further, whereas again, trying to say that he is a big fighter against the opioid crisis.

When Donald Trump says that, I feel especially for folks because my brother lived in upstate New York, I'm calling from Brooklyn, but I feel, I don't want to take up too much time, but I just truly feel that was with so many people struggling in rural areas, like the one I grew up in, I think that he really, really, really did not help with a problem.

Brian: Alexandra, thank you so much for your call. As we run out of time, Kassandra Frederique from the Drug Policy Alliance, those conflicting impulses, Trump may not have conflicting impulses, I don't think he's plagued by a lot of conflicting impulses, but they're at play with our callers. They're at play within Biden himself, because he authored parts of the legislation that led to the war on drugs. Now, he says, no one should go to jail for drugs. I wonder if you think Biden's change of heart is about having a personal experience with someone close to him struggling, after he authored that bill in the '90s, and we just have a few seconds left.

Kassandra: Yes. I think I don't know what changed Vice-President Biden's mind, but I know that having a loved one in your life that struggles with addiction shapes the way that you see the issue. I also think that the immense impact of the crime bill has been felt for generations and throughout multiple communities and I don't think you can ignore that. There are not many radio shows that take the time to do this, and so I would love to be able to hear from one more caller if we could, because no one ever gets this time.

Brian: I wish I could, but we have another guest waiting to go for the next segment, and he's very special too. We only have limited time left in the show. The callers we had are going to have to stand for now, but what I can promise you is that we're not going to drop the subject. Kassandra-

Kassandra: I appreciate that.

Brian: -Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national non-profit that works to end the war on drugs. Thank you so much.

Kassandra: Thank you.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, stay with us.

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