DRUGS/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s pick for White House drug czar removed himself from consideration after a backlash over his role in passing a law that made it tougher to limit the spread of opioid drugs.
In a Twitter post Tuesday [10-17-17] morning, the president said that Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, ‘informed me that he is withdrawing his name’ to lead the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Mr. Marino had come under fire in recent days after the Washington Post and CBS News’s ’60 Minutes’ reported he had helped shepherd legislation weakening Drug Enforcement Administration power over pharmaceutical companies that produce opioid drugs.
At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Trump said he had seen the report and ‘we’re going to take it very seriously.…This country, and frankly the world, has a drug problem.’
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that Mr. Trump ‘remains committed to confronting the opioid epidemic which claimed over 60,000 lives last year alone.’
She said he would nominate another person for the role but didn’t specify when.”
-Peter Nicholas, “Trump’s Pick for Drug Czar, Tom Marino, Withdraws Name from Consideration,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 17, 2017 11:17am