Rep. Tom Marino has withdrawn from consideration as the White House’s pick for drug czar following a bombshell report that he championed a bill that hindered federal agents from going after the Big Pharma firms that flooded the country with addictive opioids.
President Donald Trump made the announcement Tuesday morning on Twitter.
“Rep.Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar,” Trump wrote. “Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!”
Trump had nominated Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
But Marino came under fire following an expose by The Washington Post and CBS’ “60 Minutes” that revealed Marino’s role in pushing through the drug industry-backed Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.
An early Trump supporter, Marino has not yet responded to the findings in the report.
The pharmaceutical industry pitched the bill as a way to prevent painkillers from falling into the wrong hands while protecting reputable pharmacists and drug distributors. But what it actually did, according to the report, was defang the DEA by curbing their power to stop drug distributors from sending millions of opioids to doctors and pharmacies suspected of supplying addicts.