The mother of a San Francisco man struggling with fentanyl addiction is pleading with President Biden to give her son the same chance at recovery as his son Hunter Biden, rather than allow government-sanctioned “drug dens” to take root in cities across the country.
Jacqui Berlinn said a pending decision by the Justice Department on whether to allow so-called safe injection sites to take root in Philadelphia could have a ripple effect nationwide and make her son’s struggle with addiction nearly impossible to overcome.
“It’s like for the middle class and the poor people, we’ll give you these drug dens, but if you’re rich, you can afford to send your children to rehab,” Ms. Berlinn told The Washington Times. “I’m appealing to President Biden as a parent who has had a child that’s addicted. I’m in the same situation but I don’t have the money to send him to a detox and a rehab.”
Her son Corey, 32, has battled drug addiction for nine years.
Ms. Berlinn’s nonprofit Mothers Against Drug Deaths is one of several groups behind a digital ad campaign unveiled this week in Washington calling on Mr. Biden to “Please Help My Son Escape Addiction the Way You Helped Hunter. Stop government drug sites.”
Hunter Biden’s addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine came into full public view in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, following the release of his discarded laptop computer that contained shocking photographs and messages detailing his drug-fueled binges.
In his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” Hunter Biden further exposed his long struggle with addiction, recounting hours-long benders followed by multiple attempts at rehab.
“He never let me forget that all was not lost. He never abandoned me, never shunned me, never judged me, no matter how bad things got,” Hunter Biden wrote of his father.
The Justice Department is expected to decide soon whether the federal government will allow a group in Philadelphia to open the injection sites — safe havens for addicts to use heroin and other drugs under supervision to avoid fatal overdoses.
The proposal was shot down by a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania under the Trump administration, citing a 1986 “crackhouse statute” which made it illegal to knowingly rent or lease property to be used for manufacturing or distributing controlled substances.
That law was co-sponsored by then-Sen. Biden.
But the Justice Department under now-President Biden has signaled it may be open to allowing the supervised drug sites.
New York became the first U.S. city to open officially authorized privately funded supervised consumption sites in November 2021, and officials in several other cities are considering a similar model.
Proponents say the supervised facilities are a pragmatic approach to stopping the plague of overdoses that have claimed record numbers of lives in the U.S.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said the supervised sites were used more than 52,000 times in their first year of operation by 2,227 drug addicts.
The city claims that staff at the sites intervened in more than 670 overdoses that could have resulted in injury or death.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said last week that she is working with city officials to overturn a law that would prohibit privately funded safe injection sites in the city, despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejecting a plan for state-sanctioned drug use sites.
Opponents say the sites essentially sanction drug use and cast users further into the throes of addiction.
Ms. Berlinn said allowing the sites to take root in San Francisco would only deepen the city’s debilitating drug crisis.
“There are a couple thousand addicts on the streets and more arrive every day,” she said. “It’s overwhelmed, and they just allow the drugs to be sold with impunity and used with impunity.”
“He’s described San Francisco as basically hell,” Ms. Berlinn said of her son. “On one side of the street, there’s any kind of drug that you want to use and on the other side of the street, they’re handing you all the stuff to use it with.”
San Francisco has been hit especially hard by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than morphine and has flooded across the southern border under the Biden administration.
Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 50 million fentanyl pills and more than 10,800 lbs of fentanyl powder, representing more than 379 million deadly doses of the drug.
At the same time, Ms. Berlinn said San Francisco’s bureaucratic and underfunded treatment programs have made it nearly impossible for her son to seek help beating his addiction.
She said her subsidized healthcare plan will not allow him to seek treatment outside of San Francisco. Detox and rehab facilities in the city have become overwhelmed. Private rehab, which she said can run nearly $10,000 a month, is not an option.
“It’s just so hard,” she said. “He looks at me and he says ‘Mom, I don’t want my life to be like this but I feel trapped and I don’t know how to get out.’ I just look at him and I say ‘I am trying.’”
“He knows I’m trying, and he’s trying too, as much as he can,” she said. “But these drugs take over.”
Hunter Biden’s bouts with rehab have ranged from a brief stay at Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Sedona, Arizona to luxurious detox programs on the East Coast.
In 2019, Mr. Biden wired his son $75,000 to cover the cost of a float therapy session in Blue Water Wellness in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in addition to alimony and tuition payments he had fallen behind on, according to messages recovered from his abandoned laptop.
Weeks later, Mr. Biden wired another $20,000 to cover the cost of a three-month detox facility in New York City.
Last year, the president’s son was renting a $20,000-per-month home just steps from Cliffside Malibu, a South California rehab center.
A 30-day in-patient treatment at Cliffside Malibu reportedly costs at least $68,000, though the manager of the facility declined to tell reporters if Hunter Biden had ever been a patient.
