Trump Drug Czar Nominee Withdraws After Damning Report He Blocked DEA Action Against Big Pharma Pill Sellers
Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA), who was President Donald Trump’s choice to serve as his administration’s drug czar, has withdrawn his name from consideration after a damning 60 Minutes report about his role in weakening the Drug Enforcement Administration’s oversight of opioids in the United States.
“Rep. Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!”Twitter Ads info and privacyA 60 Minutes report from this past weekend revealed that Marino and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill that weakened the FDA’s ability to restrict pharmaceutical companies’ distribution of prescription opioids.
Although the bill was originally promoted as “a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed,” the investigation found that “what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets.”
Trump said on Monday that he would reexamine Marino’s nomination in the wake of the report.
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