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   What about stories of him raping his own children?   
      
      
   Vance’s anti-drug charity enlisted doctor echoing Big Pharma   
   By  JULIE CARR SMYTH   
   Published 1:59 PM EST, August 18, 2022   
      
   COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When JD Vance founded “Our Ohio Renewal” a day after   
   the 2016 presidential election, he promoted the charity as a vehicle for   
   helping solve the scourge of opioid addiction that he had lamented in   
   “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir.   
      
   But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May,   
   shortly after clinching the state’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate,   
   according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review   
   found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction   
   specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was   
   tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and   
   Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.   
      
   The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success   
   raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision   
   to bring on Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny. She’s an   
   American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning   
   the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were   
   published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the   
   residency in the fall of 2018.   
      
   Documents and emails obtained by ProPublica for a 2019 investigation found   
   that Satel, a senior fellow at AEI, sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies   
   and doctors in her articles on addiction for major news outlets and   
   occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance,   
   including on occasions in 2004 and 2016. Over the years, according to the   
   report, AEI received regular $50,000 donations and other financial support   
   from Purdue totaling $800,000.   
      
   Longtime Ohio political observer Herb Asher cast the charity’s   
   shortcomings, including Satel’s links to Big Pharma, as a “betrayal.”   
      
   “A person forms a charity presumably to do good things, so when it doesn’t,   
   for whatever reason, that really is a betrayal,” said Asher, an emeritus   
   professor of political science at Ohio State University. “That’s something   
   voters can get their arms around.”   
      
   Vance’s campaign said the nonprofit is simply on temporary hold during   
   Vance’s Senate run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan. It also said   
   Vance was unfamiliar with Satel’s connection to Purdue when she was   
   selected for the residency.   
      
   “JD didn’t know at the time, but remains proud of her work to treat   
   patients, especially those in an area of Ohio who needed it most,” the   
   campaign said in a statement.   
      
   In an email to the AP this week, Satel said that she “never consulted with”   
   or ever “took a cent from Purdue” and that she didn’t know that Purdue had   
   donated money to AEI because the institute maintains a firewall between its   
   scholars and donors. She said she relies “completely on my own experience   
   as a psychiatrist and/or data to form my opinions.”   
      
   Phoebe Keller, spokesperson for AEI, said the institute’s scholars “have   
   academic freedom to follow their own research to conclusions without   
   interference from management.”   
      
   Purdue Pharma did not respond to a message seeking comment.   
      
   Vance has described Our Ohio Renewal’s mission variously over the years as   
   “to bring interesting new businesses to the so-called Rust Belt,” “to fill   
   some of the (area’s) treatment gaps in mental health” and “to combat Ohio’s   
   opioid epidemic.”   
      
   He has acknowledged at points that the charity fell short of his vision,   
   though he has more recently suggested it remains active — including listing   
   himself on a financial disclosure filed this week as “honorary chairman” of   
   the canceled organization.   
      
   In his book, Vance recounts the hardship and heartbreak he and his family   
   experienced as a result of his mother’s battle with drug addiction, which   
   ravaged Appalachian areas of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when the 38-   
   year-old was growing up. She used both OxyContin and heroin.   
      
   Ohio remains one of the hardest-hit states for deadly drug overdoses, with   
   about 14 people dying each day, according to the most recent statistics.   
      
   Vance expressed hopes in media interviews about the time Satel arrived in   
   struggling Ironton, Ohio, in September 2018, that she would use her   
   experience to develop better treatment methods for addiction that could be   
   “scaled nationally” or perhaps to produce “a paper or book-length   
   publication” detailing her findings. She has yet to do either.   
      
   “I am working on a book,” Satel told the AP in an email exchange this week,   
   nearly three years after she wrapped up her residency.   
      
   D.R. Gossett, CEO of the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action   
   Organization, who helped oversee Satel’s roughly $70,000 residency, said   
   she “helped people who were struggling in southern Ohio” and “to this day,   
   people are thankful for her presence.” That included treating an   
   unspecified number of patients in a region long designated a health care   
   shortage area and what Gossett described as “community planning efforts.”   
      
   After the residency ended, Satel’s public remarks suggested she remained as   
   convinced as ever that addiction stems from combined behavioral and   
   environmental forces — not the documented overprescribing and aggressive   
   marketing of OxyContin and other opioids that helped families and state,   
   local and tribal governments ultimately secure a $6 billion national   
   settlement against Purdue in March.   
      
   “The data are completely clear that the decline in opioid prescribing had   
   no effect on the overall opioid overdose rate,” she said in the email to   
   the AP, blaming the number of growing overdoses on heroin and fentanyl.   
      
   It’s a familiar position for Satel, whose opinion columns in national   
   publications included an October 2004 Times article, “Doctors Behind Bars:   
   Treating Pain is Now Risky Business,” a February 2018 Politico article,   
   “The Myth of What’s Driving the Opioid Crisis - Doctor-prescribed   
   painkillers are not the biggest threat” and the March 2018 Slate article,   
   “Pill Limits Are Not a Smart Way to Fight the Opioid Crisis.”   
      
   Jack Frech, a senior executive in residence at Ohio University who headed   
   an Appalachian Ohio welfare agency for more than 30 years, said there is no   
   doubt that the region was targeted with prescription opioids in the early   
   days of the epidemic. He said the path to addiction to heroin and fentanyl   
   for many residents “started with the overabundance of easily accessible   
   pain pills.”   
      
      
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