Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) shared the story of his half-sister's addiction to heroin during Saturday night's Republican debate. Cruz's older sibling battled drug addiction for many years, which eventually claimed her life.
"My older sister Miriam, who was my half-sister, struggled her whole life with drug and alcohol addiction. My father and her mom divorced when she was a little girl and she was angry her whole life. And she ended up with a man who ended up in-and-out of jail," Cruz said. "She then became a single mom. And she herself went to jail, several times, and she ended up spending some time in a crack house. I still remember my father and me driving up to get Miriam out of that crack house to try to convince her she needed to be a mom to my nephew Joey.
"She wasn't willing to listen. She was not willing to change the path she was on, she was angry. I was, had just gotten my first job, coming out of law school, I took a $20,000 loan on a credit card to put my nephew Joey in Valley Forge Military Academy, he was in sixth grade at the time, to pay his way through that. And, about five, six years ago, Miriam died of an overdose. The coroner ruled it accidental ... She went to sleep one night, had taken too many pills, and Joey walked in and found her dead."
Cruz then turned to the fight against heroin.
"Solving it has to occur at the state and local level with programs like AA and counseling and churches and charities. But it also has to occur securing the borders. Because you've got Mexican cartels that are smuggling vast amounts of heroin into this country. We know how to secure the borders. What is missing is the political will to do it. And as president, I will secure the border. We will end this deluge of drugs that is flowing over our southern border and that is killing Americans across this country."