By Michael Aron
Chief Political Correspondent
Drug addiction has become a signature issue for Chris Christie, and today he took the anti-addiction platform to Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. He announced an agreement with New York state to share prescription drug data to prevent opioid addicts from doctor shopping for prescriptions across the Hudson River.
It’s part of the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program, known as PMP.
“Partnering with New York adds tremendous strength to the PMP’s ability to track the signs of prescription drug misuse and other suspicious behaviors, and I want to thank Gov. Cuomo for his commitment to this mutual state effort,” Christie said.
Twenty-eight-year-old Amanda Poptopchuk became addicted to pain medication at age 15, moved on to heroin at 20 and is clean today.
“The Prescription Monitoring Program was not in place during my active addiction. I am am extremely fortunate to be alive and standing before you today,” she said.
A year ago, Christie signed a bill strengthening the PMP program by requiring pharmacies to file data on all dangerous drugs.
“Within 24 hours of filling a prescription a pharmacy has to enter the data into the database. So we’re only one day behind, historically it was a few weeks behind but now we’ll have data within 24 hours,” said Dr. Jeff Gudin.
While the governor came here to talk about his work on addiction, the press has other things on its plate like Ted Cruz and John Kasich joining forces to try and stop Donald Trump.
Christie called the effort stupid.
“I don’t think there’s anything underhanded or dirty about it. I just think that Ted and John have taken leave of their senses and that’s what happened with most of the stop Trump stuff. These are normal people, I know them, I know Ted, I know John. I was on the same stage with them and I’ve worked with John for years, campaigned for him in 2010 and 2014. You know, gave him a significant amount of money in both those years. I have great respect for John Kasich, but these guys have taken leave of their senses and it’s part of this whole Trump movement that’s not tethered to reality,” he said.
For good measure, he added, “This is like giving a blood transfusion to a corpse. They’re done already. It’s over. I told you guys this for a long time this is over.”
Sen. Loretta Weinberg attended the press conference as the chief sponsor of last year’s prescription monitoring bill. Yesterday she was the lone “no” vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Walter Timpone.
As an Election Law Enforcement Commissioner, Timpone recused himself from hearing a complaint involving Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo. Weinberg says Timpone misled the Senate.
“Why was he less than truthful about this recusal? And I will repeat he told me on the phone that from the moment he heard anything about the DiVincenzo case he recused himself. Well the record shows that is not true,” she said.
Christie rejected the inference that Timpone’s recusal was in any way designed to protect DiVincenzo, who is one of the governor’s close Democratic allies.
“Listen, there’s no protecting Joe DiVincenzo. I’ve been his friend for lots of years, you know, he has to take care of himself and that’s not my job to do. The fact is, ELEC does what ELEC does. We have some very good people and for most of my governorship we had four active members, two former superior court judges, one Republican and one Democrat,” Christie said.
Christie blamed the three vacancies now at ELEC on Democratic senators who won’t support his nominees.
For more stories that are part of the initiative Healthy NJ: New Jersey’s Drug Addiction Crisis, click here.