Our collective failure on opioids

After Washington wrecks small towns, Big Pharma moves in for the kill

Medical workers take away a woman who has overdosed on heroin in Warren, Ohio.
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

President Trump's nominee to be "drug czar," Tom Marino, withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday. The reason, as explained by a joint 60 Minutes/Washington Post investigation, was that Marino had connived with the pharmaceutical industry and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to pass a bill making it easier for them to flood American communities with opioid pills.

Effectively, Marino is one of the biggest drug pushers in the entire world — his nomination was something akin to nominating Pablo Escobar to run the ONDCP. Whoops! But that is only the start of Washington's failure to address the crisis — both through its economic failures and its abysmal addiction policies.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.