5/31/25
I spent time yesterday in the studio at WJFF 90.5 FM, the radio station where I host a monthly half-hour broadcast and a longer podcast about addiction issues, The Kingfisher Project – Information Against Addiction. https://wjffradio.org/thekingfisherproject/. WJFF is an NPR station, now threatened by cuts in funding from the Trump administration. The president has issued an executive order that would strip federal funding from CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), totaling $545 million for fiscal year 2025. Those funds are distributed to local public radio and television stations, with a focus on community service and content development. CPB is the largest single source of funding for many public media stations, supporting local and national programming. WJFF is one of the multitude of stations so affected. The concern at the station is palpable. It has filtered down to this producer/host, causing me to contemplate an interruption, or worse, an end to the message I help bring to a listening area that includes Sullivan County. Sullivan County recently had the highest per capita overdose fatality rate of every county in New York State, New York City included. There is a need for the Kingfisher Project’s message, as there is for the many other public service messages the station provides.
I recorded an interview with the Board Chair and the Executive Director of an organization called Community In Crisis. www.communityincrisis.org. CIC’s mission is to “combat substance use disorder through youth and family education and recovery support, building a healthier, more connected community.” Begun in 2014, CIC has grown to become a model of what a grassroots organization can achieve. In 2024, they were honored with the prestigious White House Blue Ribbon Award for excellence in youth prevention education. They, too, receive federal funding. They, too, are holding their breath over continued funding.
While discussing the many good things CIC does, I heard the story of a young man in their community who had recently been saved from overdose by naloxone, the lifesaving overdose reversal drug, also known as Narcan. Saved, referred, placed in treatment, and hopefully beginning his journey to recovery. Absent education, prevention, harm reduction, and peer recovery support, to name a few services CIC provides, this young man would be but a statistic. Another cut the Trump administration has proposed is a $56 million grant that teaches first responders how to use naloxone. The recent significant drop in overdose deaths can be attributed in part to naloxone. With approximately 90,000 overdose fatalities still lost annually in the U.S., now hardly seems like an appropriate time to cut naloxone funding. Quite the opposite would cut into that 90,000 figure even more.
I had not left the studio when I came across the news report of Elon Musk’s drug use. I was not surprised. The symbiotic derangement Musk shares with our president – financial gluttony, manipulating the law, evading the law, compulsive lying, and distortion of fact - are all of a piece we’re all too familiar with in a Trump administration. The drug issue simply gilds the lily on the malignancy we know as the Trump presidency.
Nor was this the first report I’d heard of drug use among Trump aides and advisors. Easy access to Xanax and Provigil to help staffers work under stressful conditions has reportedly been the norm. Who knows what we don’t know? The Musk news led me to think about drug use in Hitler’s Germany.
Norman Ohler’s book, Blitzed – Drugs in the Third Reich, could be a cautionary manual for a wannabe authoritarian regime. Methamphetamines for the military. Methamphetamine chocolates for housewives. Thanks to advertising (Think Purdue Pharma), meth to help spark the entire population’s productivity. Development of Eukodol – an early version of oxycodone. Hitler’s right-hand man, Goering, was morphine dependent, if not morphine addicted. Hitler himself, ever more reliant upon a quack doctor, Theodore Morell. The parallels ought to be instructive. Trump could do himself a favor and read it. Given his notoriously scant engagement with the printed word, perhaps he could find the time to view this documentary based on Ohler’s book. You can too. Go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DtR-CNZN44&t=732s
