Newly named GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance made his mother’s struggles with opioid addiction a part of his public story, and he started a nonprofit to fight the scourge in 2017.

But earlier this year, the Republican senator from Ohio voted against an anti-fentanyl bill that he had co-sponsored. When asked why, Vance’s office said it was because the senator didn’t want to vote for $60 billion in support for Ukraine, which is under attack by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

So does that mean that it was more important to Vance to oppose supporting Ukraine than it was to fight fentanyl in opioid-ravaged states like Ohio?

Vance’s office hasn’t responded when asked multiple times. But some critics say that Vance has taken several positions that have been convenient for Putin, while others say that the GOP VP nominee wasn’t serious about fighting opioids in the first place.

Vance published his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, in the summer of 2016. It described growing up in Middletown in southwest Ohio, his mother’s drug and domestic struggles, and how he spent time with a more-stable grandmother in Eastern Kentucky.

The book purports to speak for a huge swath of left-behind America. And when Donald Trump won the presidency in a stunning upset four months after its publication, many in the chattering classes turned to it and its author to learn what they’d missed about the malcontented masses. 

The following year, Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, announced that he was moving back to Ohio to address the problems confronting communities oppressed by the feeling that the only way to get ahead is to get away — to someplace where opportunity actually exists. In a March 16, 2017, op-ed in the New York Times, Vance described living in Silicon Valley.

“It’s jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse,” he wrote. “And I’ve suspected that this optimism blinds many in Silicon Valley to the real struggles in other parts of the country. So I decided to move home, to Ohio.”

Vance didn’t mention an ambition to seek political office, but he did say in the column that he was “founding an organization to combat Ohio’s opioid epidemic.”

He ended up running for office and in 2023 began his political career from a lofty perch in the U.S. Senate. Once there, Vance continued to voice concerns about fentanyl.

“When we talk about fentanyl trafficking in particular, I worry a lot that we’re always… a few years behind what’s actually going on in our country, ” Vance said during a January hearingof the Senate Banking Committee. “And I think back to my own very personal experience with opioid addiction in my family. Ten years ago, what everyone was talking about was prescription painkillers. But of course, ten years ago prescription painkillers were sort of giving way to street heroin. Then five years ago, everyone was talking about street heroin, but heroin was kind of giving way to fentanyl and now, of course, we’re all talking about fentanyl.”

When Democratic Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown authored the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, Vance signed on as a co-sponsor. Becoming law in April, it declares the crisis a national emergency, creates new powers to disrupt money-laundering and distribution networks, and it creates new sanctions.

But before the measure came to a final vote, Vance had a change of heart. His office told Spectrum News 1 that the senator couldn’t support the $60 billion to help Ukraine defend itself against Putin’s invasion that was part of the package, and thus couldn’t vote yes.

Vance has said he opposes support for Ukraine because it doesn’t have the capacity to push Russia back across Ukraine’s pre-invasion boundaries. But Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations told the Capital Journal that simply cutting off support and telling Ukraine to negotiate would only embolden Putin.

And Bill Browder, one of Putin’s leading foes, said that Vance’s positions on support for Ukraine sound a lot like the Russian authoritarian’s own.

In any case, Vance placed stopping support to Ukraine over at least one front in the domestic fight against fentanyl, and his office won’t comment on why. A political opponent said that one reason is that Vance never really cared that much about the scourge of fentanyl.

His vote on the law is “entirely consistent with the fact that J.D. Vance has never cared about protecting Ohioans from fentanyl or opioid addiction,” said Justin Barasky, a national Democratic political consultant who managed Brown’s 2018 re-election campaign. Vance “launched his political career taking advantage of the fact that Ohio had a serious problem with (opioids.) He started a fake organization that he said was going to address the crisis. It spent zero dollars on treatment, and instead hired political advisors, did a poll, and even brought in a woman who was a mouthpiece for big pharma. So the vote was entirely consistent with his past actions.” 

The nonprofit Barasky referred to was called Our Ohio Renewal. 

The group drew criticism for hiring a doctor for a year-long residency who had long cast doubt on the role pharmaceutical opioids played in fueling the epidemic of illicit opioids such as heroin and fentanyl. She also worked for the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has received substantial funding from Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma.

Some of the doctor’s claims relied on research that was funded by the opioid maker, ProPublica reported. In 2007 Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to misleading regulators about how addictive its products were, the New York Times reported.

Also, Our Ohio Renewal’s biggest expenditure was paid to Vance’s top political advisor, Business Insider reported. 

Regardless of his motives, Vance’s actions on the FEND Off Fentanyl Act show that he prioritized blocking Ukraine aid over the fentanyl fight, said University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven. He said he found that confusing.

“You’re a U.S. senator from Ohio, and you’ve got all kinds of Ohio battles to fight in a state that’s been economically trailing the nation and where you are out in front is” stopping aid to Ukraine, Niven said. “You’ve got a political message that’s your whole reason for being, and yet thwarting efforts to aid Ukraine wins the day in what he does and what he says.”

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.