Ads attacking Shapiro treat opioid deaths like campaign slapstick

Billboards in my home county try to help.

“One in three people knows someone with opioid use disorder. Find support.”

“Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) affects babies exposed to opioids during pregnancy. Support for families can prevent NAS.”

“Recovery is tough. Recovery is freeing.”

The signs staked along rural Venango County highways testify to the lethal high times that followed the end of a better high time here. The messaging usually catches my glance before I can remember to look away and the unease once unleashed lingers. It is of a piece with the generalized anxiety that comes with living in northwestern Pennsylvania communities long under assault by forces largely outside their control.

For all the proud heritage, natural beauty and tested mettle, there is always the learned hypervigilance, anticipating the next in a long line of hammers to drop. Another employer packed up. Another retail chain decamped. Another telling obituary lying in wait on the local newspaper's back page.

Hence the indignity of the latest roadside attractions.

A political action committee out of Harrisburg looks to leverage Pennsylvania's opioid tragedy — not to deliver life-saving policy proposals or advice, but for political sport.

Blaring billboards in black, gold and red, worded with emojis in the style of the most asinine social media memes recently cropped up on the outskirts of Titusville and Warren.

"Do you (thumbs up) opioid deaths? You’ll (heart)..."

Not the opioid manufacturers, distributors and cartels who created and fuel the crisis.

No, the love ― blame ― was heaped on Pennsylvania governor candidate Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The billboards in their most recent edition feature pictures of Shapiro, a Democrat, and President Joe Biden grinning with their thumbs up. At the bottom, those to whom we owe the pleasure — the oxymoronically-named Commonwealth Leaders Fund — take credit for renting the space and refer viewers to a website that purports to deliver "facts" on Shapiro and Biden (who, last I checked, is not running for governor and whose time in office barely overlaps with Shapiro's). And the link supporting the opioids assault? It is, not surprisingly, not live.

That's because the transparent attempt to distract from the attorney general's criminal justice bona fides doesn't hold up.

Critics often highlight a bungled AG drug case in Luzerne County. Fair enough. But a May release announcing a new report on the fentanyl crisis also tallied the wins: Under Shapiro's leadership, the office has arrested more than 8,100 dealers and traffickers, taken approximately 3.2 million doses of heroin and 5.65 million doses of fentanyl off the streets, and increased by 60% arrests for diversion — cases where medical professionals peddle prescription drugs for abuse.

And the dead link purporting to support the billboard’s opioid smear? It refers to a news report about the landmark $1.07 billion settlement Shapiro negotiated with three pharmaceutical distributors and Johnson & Johnson after he took them on for their leading role in the opioid epidemic.

All 67 Pennsylvania counties signed on to the settlement. Elected officials here welcomed it, as the Titusville Herald reported when the Venango County commissioners voted to join the settlement in late 2021.

"You would be hard pressed to find a person in this county that hasn't been touched by the opioid crisis in some way or another," Commissioner Sam Breene, a Republican, said.

He and fellow Commissioner Chip Abramovic, a Democrat, noted that the crisis has affected an entire generation. And the commissioners lamented the costs of confronting it. "At least someone is paying that isn't the taxpayers,“ Breene said, according to the Herald.

Of the settlement proceeds, Erie County is set to get $16.3 million, Venango, $2.3 million, Crawford, $4.6 million and Warren, $1 million. Metrics of misery, including overdose deaths, opioid abuse hospitalizations, naloxone doses administered and opioid shipments, determined the counties' shares.

The money won't bring back the dead. But the treatment and resources it will fund promise to save others.

Mulling the potential, a February editorial in the Warren Times-Observer stated, "It is enough money to start and sustain programs that could help hundreds of Warren County residents every year."

The Commonwealth Leaders Fund did not respond to a request for comment. Asked about the billboards at a recent campaign event in Oil City, Shapiro dismissed them as nonsense. He pointed to his record and plans should he win.

"We’ve been on the front lines on the criminal side and making sure we hold people accountable," he said. "I also recognize that when these opioids...make their way onto our streets…they get here because of the decisions made by executives and pharmaceutical companies, which is why I was one of four attorneys general to lead the national investigation, ultimately leading to a $26 billion settlement with the opioid companies which is bringing over a billion dollars back here to Pennsylvania," he said.

That "robust, strong law enforcement response" will continue, accompanied by investments in treatment and related services for addiction, a disease not a crime, he said.

The billboard attacking Shapiro does not mention but surely intends to bolster his opponent in the governor's race, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who, as the Philadelphia Inquirer has noted, the same PAC spent millions to defeat in the Republican primary. What does that tell you?

Commonwealth Leaders Fund, which is part of a network of PACs generously supported by Philadelphia billionaire Jeffrey Yass, has been criticized for past political ads deemed racist or misleading. And here, those who crafted the opioid billboards had better choices.

I understand not wanting to tout the extreme, anti-democratic actions and positions that helped Mastriano win the Republican primary — amplifying the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election; acting as the "point person" in Pennsylvania for the fake electors scheme to overturn the election; his presence outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection; support for a six-week, no exceptions abortion ban; and lately what, in any other political moment, would be disqualifying news: His campaign's payment of $5,000 for consulting services to far-right site Gab, a space where the accused Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue mass murderer spewed hate, and whose founder, Andrew Torba, as the Jerusalem Post reported, said this about conservatism: "We don't want people who are atheists. We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country... you're going to enjoy the fruits of living in a Christian society under Christian laws and under a Christian culture."

Mastriano recently rejected anti-Semitism and apparently removed his account from Gab after intense blowback. But the question remains: What was he doing there in the first place?

In his time in the state Senate, Mastriano has backed or introduced a handful of bills related to the opioid crisis. The most recent proposal targets stiffer penalties for fentanyl deliveries resulting in death. It would be something to point to in PAC messaging rooted in substance and truth, worthy of Pennsylvanians' urgent needs.

But why do that when you can mislead and distract vulnerable people who may or, likely may not, follow every piece of news out of Harrisburg?

The Commonwealth Leaders Fund opioid billboards in this northwestern Pennsylvania context exude the callous contempt captured in the drug company executives' "pillbilly" jokes. The region suffers from poverty, blight and deaths of despair, yes. But amid the inexorable losses, stalwart local employers hire and entrepreneurs carve new market niches — such as the granite countertop shop in an old brick refinery north of Franklin and the new music venue at the Titusville Iron Works. Young people have launched the Be Here initiative to promote all the good reasons the region remains a place for startups, outdoor adventurers, artists, brewers, manufacturers and more to build a life.

But OK, sure. Underestimate and insult them. Erect the billboards, create a momentary impression, a sense that somehow the guy on the sign who is fighting the crisis and delivering resources to help people is somehow to blame for the sickness brooding over their homes. Like a blip of disinformation in a social media feed, the billboards have everything to do with emotion and nothing to do with truth, policy, or track records.

No one “thumbs up” opioid deaths. Exploiting that agony is not clever or edgy. It is unconscionable. In 2021, the need for counterfeit joy killed 15 Pennsylvanians a day. More than 1,600 babies in this state entered the world dopesick in 2018. Those contending with addiction and those who love or depend on them here and statewide require adult debate and proposals and candidates and campaigns capable of engaging and deploying them, respectively. Especially since, as Shapiro's office detailed in the May report, fentanyl, so much more potent than other opioids, is driving a fresh wave of death.

What we get instead from these hacks is a trollfest.

Want to lead the commonwealth?

In the name of decency, take down the signs.

Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on Twitter @ETNThompson.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Ads attacking Shapiro treat opioid deaths like campaign slapstick