Teen Daughter Of New NYC Mayor Admits Drug And Alcohol Abuse

The teenage daughter of New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio released a video on Tuesday discussing her struggle with clinical depression and substance abuse.

In the nearly 5-minute video, Chiara de Blasio acknowledges that she drank alcohol and smoked marijuana, but says she’s now clean after being treated at an outpatient center.

“Getting sober is always a positive thing,” she says, encouraging others in her situation to also get help.

“We really can’t do anything as a society to help those people until we start talking about it. And nobody can do sobriety on their own,” says de Blasio, whose father takes over from outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Jan. 1.

NPR’s Dan Bobkoff, reporting from New York, says Chiara de Blasio was a prominent presence in her father’s bid for mayor and that campaign staff “had long ignored questions about her drug and alcohol use.”

Reuters says:

“An ad this summer featuring [Bill de Blasio’s] bi-racial son, Dante, became one of the most talked-about ads of the campaign and helped boost de Blasio’s popularity among minority voters concerned about controversial police tactics.”

“De Blasio took on a difficult personal matter during the campaign, agreeing to one in-depth interview about his father’s alcoholism and eventual suicide to pre-empt a newspaper article on the subject, which was published soon after.”

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