Vance's anti-drug charity enlisted doctor echoing Big Pharma

August 18, 2022

Julie Carr Smyth Associated Press, ABC News

FILE—Ohio Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, JD Vance, takes the stage to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Aug. 5, 2022. Vance founded a new charity called "Our Ohio Renewal" a day after the 2016 presidential election, promising to use it to help solve the scourge of opioid addiction, Vance's Senate rival, Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, has targeted "Our Ohio Renewal" as a failure. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- 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.