Democratic representative Tim Ryan, who has criticized his Republican rival in the Ohio Senate race for his allegedly dubious advocacy against drug addiction, has received thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from drug firms involved in the national opioid crisis.
Since 2007, Ryan has been the beneficiary of a combined $27,000 from the three largest drug distribution companies in the U.S.: AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Dublin, and Cardinal Health, the Associated Press reported.
This revelation comes as Ryan scrutinizes opponent J. D. Vance’s anti-opioid nonprofit, Our Ohio Renewal, which a Ryan spokesperson in a comment to AP accused of propping up a Purdue Pharma-linked doctor with a record of diminishing the danger of OxyContin. Vance’s campaign told the outlet that Ryan’s receipt of donations from the drug companies was “shameless hypocrisy.” Vance has also clarified that he didn’t know about the physician’s connections to the pharmaceutical manufacturer but that he “remains proud of her work to treat patients, especially those in an area of Ohio who needed it most.”
A PAC affiliated with Cardinal Health Inc., a multinational health-care services company located in Ohio, gave Ryan $21,000 since 2007, including $5,000 this August. The PAC of McKesson Corp. Employees gave Ryan $5,000 in 2012 and the PAC of Amerisource Bergen Corp. gave him $1,000 in 2019. The opioid crisis was raging during this time period, AP noted.
As the November election nears, Ryan’s campaign has launched ads attacking Vance’s organization, calling it a “sham” that “didn’t fund a single addiction program” to combat the opioid epidemic but supported measures that “made it worse.”
Ryan’s voting record in Congress on the drug issue has had mixed consistency. He once co-sponsored Trump-supported legislation that would add $15 million of funding for enhanced drug apprehension and enforcement at the southern border. However, he missed a vote in 2020 on a bill that would extend the Drug Enforcement Administration’s designation of fentanyl-related substances as Schedule 1 controlled substances, which are narcotics that are not accepted for medical use and have a high potential for abuse.