Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Lead photo via Wikimedia Commons
President Trump announced this week that his nominee for the country’s “drug czar” was withdrawing from consideration from the position after a recent media investigation questioned his ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Rep. Tom Marino, a staunch supporter of Trump’s campaign, was the President’s top choice to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but Democrats urged Trump to drop his support after news that Marino helped block the DEA from enforcing drug laws against pharmaceutical companies went public.
A joint investigation by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes singled out Marino as the driving force behind a 2016 bill that stripped the DEA of the power to freeze suspicious shipments of narcotics by pharmaceutical firms. For years, the DEA was regularly fining these businesses for flooding the market with suspiciously large shipments of opioid painkillers. Between 2014 and 2016, the drug industry spent over $100 million on lobbying efforts to convince Congress to pass legislation preventing the DEA from interfering with the multi-billion-dollar annual revenue they were making from opioid sales.
Tom Marino spent several…
