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Kellyanne Conway: Choose French Fries Over Fentanyl
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French fries are good, m’kay?
In a seemingly tone-deaf take on combatting addiction, Kellyanne Conway last week told college kids to simply choose junk food over drugs.
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"On our college campuses, your folks are reading the labels, they won't put any sugar in their body, they don't eat carbs anymore, and they're very, very fastidious about what goes into their body," Conway, who is counsel to the president, said at a White House-sponsored youth forum in Washington, D.C.
"And then you buy a street drug for $5 or $10, it's laced with fentanyl, and that's it.”
She closed out her anti-drug riff with a simplistic suggestion that sparked some backlash on social media and some laughter in the room.
“I guess my short advice is, as somebody double your age, eat the ice cream, have the french fry, don’t buy the street drug,” she said. “Believe me, it all works out.”
Twitter did not believe her.
“Read her advice to my 17yr old. His response was to ask if advice came from the Onion because if not,” tweeted one woman, “someone needs to drug test HER!”
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Another Twitter user quipped: “Nothing stops chronic back pain or wisdom tooth pain quite like ‘the French fry.’”
Others offered even more searing responses.
“Next time I visit the two relatives I've lost to opioids,” another social media user wrote. “I'll leave ice cream and fries on their graves.”
Some went for the snark.
“Can confirm, free-basing ice cream and eating one French fry is way more euphoric than one of the strongest opioids on the market,” one man wrote.
The bizarre pronouncement came just days after the Trump administration vowed to amp up the drug war by pursuing the death penalty for drug dealers in certain cases.
"We have to be tough, we have to be smart, we have to change the laws," the president said while announcing the move as part of a three-pronged anti-drug proposal. "The ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty. Now maybe our country's not ready for that—it's possible."
Days after Trump’s announcement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions followed his lead by instructing federal prosecutors to pursue capital punishment in major drug cases.
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Keri Blakinger is a former drug user and current reporter living in Texas. She covers breaking news for the Houston Chronicle and previously worked for the New York Daily News and the Ithaca Times. She has written about drugs and criminal justice for the Washington Post, Salon, Quartz and more. She loves dogs and is not impressed by rodeo food. Find Keri on LinkedIn and Twitter.
