Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, made an unplanned stop Monday during his campaign to take several Pennsylvanians struggling with drug addiction to a detox center for treatment.
Monday marked the last day of a three-day stop for Oz’s campaign in Germantown and Kensington. Earlier in the day, he held a “Safer Streets” initiative that was initially focused on crime and gun violence, NBC News’s Dasha Burns reported.
However, Oz’s focus reportedly shifted to addiction after he ran into a group of individuals who needed treatment.
“Oz did a roundtable about gun violence in Germantown and then walked around Kensington where he ended the day by driving four people to Rock Ministry in hopes of them getting detox,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Julia Terruso reported.
Oz was seen tying one man’s shoe and embracing a woman who reportedly needed addiction treatment, according to photos Burns uploaded from Kensington.
Oz was seen riding in the passenger seat of a full pick-up truck, including at least one person in the truck’s bed, talking to reporters about taking several Pennsylvania residents to a local detox center in a video uploaded to Twitter by ABC’s Will McDuffie.
Monday’s trip to the detox center was unplanned, Oz explained.
“So what are you gonna do about our addiction problem?” one reporter asked Oz.
“You missed all the fun. The first thing is put the cigarette down,” Oz told the reporter. “That definitely doesn’t help because it breeds the belief that you have to put something in your body to get through the day.”
“The solution is this, getting people to go to detox and give it a chance,” Oz continued. “Maybe it’s going to fail a lot of times, but it’s gonna succeed a lot as well. You just keep trying until it finally works.”
“Detox saves lives, but the first step is often the most difficult,” Oz tweeted after the video of him taking residents to a detox center surfaced.
Monday’s unexpected trip to the detox center is not the first time Oz has helped those in need while on the campaign trail. Dr. Oz recently rushed into the crowd to help a woman who collapsed during one of his campaign rallies.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.