Louise Vincent has used street drugs since she was 13. She has emerged as a leading voice trying to humanize and help people who use drugs as they face the most devastating overdose crisis in U.S. history.
April Laissle/NPR
When Louise Vincent was introduced at a drug policy conference last month in Phoenix, the huge crowd erupted in applause.
She’s a small woman, rail thin. At age 47, her face is weathered by what she describes as a hard life.
It’s grown harder in recent years, after drug cartels began pushing deadlier drugs into U.S. communities, including fentanyl and the veterinary drug xylazine.
“We saw the drug supply turn upside down,” Vincent told the crowd. “It’s toxic.”
In interviews with NPR, Vincent said she herself began using drugs at age 13 and has never been able to live sober long-term. “What they told me was if I couldn’t get [off drugs], I wasn’t doing something right, and that’s not true,” she said.
Vincent points to research showing that abstinence-focused approaches to recovery don’t work for many people who experience addiction.
Her own ideas are controversial and face serious opposition from many U.S. politicians. Many Democrats and Republicans want tougher laws and longer prison sentences to combat fentanyl.
But Vincent has emerged as one of the leading voices in the U.S. pushing to humanize and rally help for drug users, like herself, even when they’re not yet willing or able to live sober.
“We have made it OK to abandon people who use drugs. We tell an entire group of people it’s OK if they die,” she said.
With total drug deaths in the U.S. now topping 112,000 fatalities a year, she argues the U.S. focus on law enforcement and drug abstinence hasn’t worked and…
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