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News Wednesday, Mar 14 2018

New Ad: Saccone Blames Families And Turns Deaf Ear To Opioid Crisis

Mar 14, 2018

To demonstrate the high stakes of Tuesday’s election for Western Pennsylvania communities suffering from the opioid epidemic, American Bridge is launching a new Facebook ad underlining how dangerous Rick Saccone’s do-nothing approach to the opioid crisis would be in Congress.

The ad, which is backed by a 5-figure buy, follows Politico coverage indicating that White House Senior Adviser Kellyanne Conway, “was taken aback when NBC reported that Saccone had said last year that the government was limited in what it could do to stem the opioid epidemic.”

To watch the new ad, “Rick Saccone: Wrong for Western Pennsylvania,” click HERE.

“The opioid epidemic is slamming Western Pennsylvania harder than almost any part of the country,” said American Bridge President Bradley Beychok. “And instead of showing that he understands the growing threat and agonizing pain of this emergency as it takes so many lives, Rick Saccone says the families are to blame.  Rick Saccone doesn’t care about fighting this crisis, and that makes him completely unfit for Congress.”

In January, Saccone denied government resources should be used to help alleviate the opioid crisis, arguing that such work was “the family’s responsibility.”

Last year, during a hearing, Saccone told a mother whose son had been addicted to opioids, “People are in my office all day long – I’m sure it’s the same with all my colleagues here – you know, ‘we need more funding, we need more funding.’ We don’t have any more funding, okay? We’re going to try to cut the budget.”

But Saccone’s dedication to fiscal responsibility vanished when he later supported the Republican tax giveaway to the rich, which will increase the U.S. budget deficit by $1.5 trillion while driving healthcare costs even higher in Pennsylvania and across the country. His restraint was also MIA when he used his Pennsylvania House expense account to waste almost half a million dollars of taxpayer money on fancy dinners for himself and lobbyists.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, Pennsylvania as a whole has the 4th worst rate of opioid overdose deaths in the country and emergency room visits for opioid overdoses climbed 80% from 2017 to 2017. The Pew Charitable Trusts research found that Allegheny County has one of the highest opioid overdose death rates of any high-population county.


Published: Mar 14, 2018

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