Geraldo Rivera, co-host of The Five on Fox News, appeared on Hannity Tuesday where he came to the defense of the Biden administration’s pilot program to reduce drug overdose deaths in the U.S., a plan that has sparked outrage among Republicans. The program will provide clean paraphernalia, opioid reversal drugs, and fentanyl test kits among other things. Those test kits alone could save a lot of lives due to the fact that fentanyl has commonly been found in other drugs recently, leading to overdoses. The program was put in place in response to soaring overdose deaths in recent years.
“Believe me, I am not enthusiastic about this plan at all. But Sean, you have to consider the fact — this is the question: Do junkies’ lives matter?” Rivera said. “We lost 100,000 Americans in the last one year to overdose deaths (That number is from between May 2020 and April 2021). Fentanyl is everywhere, it’s in all of these drugs. They open these two pilot locations with a safe, secure, where the junkies can shoot up. They’ve saved 114 lives in six weeks.”
I’m like the Walter Cronkite of dope.Geraldo Rivera
This is not the first program of its kind. Similar programs were previously launched in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Annapolis, Maryland, where a county health official said it gives them the chance to help those afflicted with drug addiction. Rivera pointed out that the situation will be the same in this case.
“There are therapists on site, as I understand it, in the pilot locations. There are sanitary conditions,” Rivera said. “They come in with their own drugs. It is not that the government is giving them drugs.”
Sean Hannity and Fox News contributor Dan Bongino vehemently disagreed with Rivera, instead being in favor of jail and treatment programs. But Rivera reminded them that his opinion on the matter is shaped by the fact that he’s been covering drug epidemics for decades.
“There have been treatment programs forever,” Rivera said. “I’ve been covering drugs since heroin, the epidemic, the first one. Then the crack and everything else that came after it. I’m like the Walter Cronkite of dope.”
Hannity airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on Fox News Channel.
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