A U.S. Senator from Florida is calling for the revival of a federal drug czar position on the Cabinet level for the first time since early in the Barack Obama administration.
Republican Rick Scott raised the possibility of a return of the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to the President’s Cabinet for the first time since 2009. Former President Bill Clinton set the precedent of having that officer on the Cabinet level in 1993, an approach embraced by Scott in a letter to President Joe Biden Friday.
“This important statutory position, the President’s principal adviser on all drug policy matters, was downgraded in 2009 when you were Vice President,” Scott chided Biden.
“Given the unique role of the ONDCP to assess threats both domestically and internationally, the ONDCP director should lead the National Strategy on combating this epidemic. Returning the director to the Cabinet would help improve information sharing and coordination between departments that is already required by law, and allow the ONDCP to have better oversight of the National Drug Control Budget,” Scott said, noting that 100,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2020.
As one would expect from Scott, partisan polemic permeated the letter, with Scott seemingly blaming Biden for the uptick in overdoses and the “wave of grief” that began when Donald Trump was President.
“Since 2018, the dramatic rise in synthetic opioid overdoses has sent a wave of grief through American communities. Your administration has shown a shocking lack of will to stop this flow of dangerous drugs, and the traffickers who bring them into our communities. You have a duty to the American people — not the illegal aliens that are flagrantly ignoring U.S. law and trafficking children and drugs, and committing crimes. It is time to take action to protect our families,” Scott asserted.
The porous southern border, unsurprisingly, was an issue for Scott as well.
“Fentanyl is pouring across the border, and until the strategy addresses that, it is incomplete. We cannot ignore that Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) continue to traffic drugs while our border agents are overwhelmed by the massive influx of illegal immigrants that your administration is welcoming with open arms. Until our border is secured, American lives will continue to be lost to this epidemic.”
Even in 2009, Republicans noted the incongruity of Biden, who made his bones as a drug warrior in the Senate of the 20th Century, working as a “salesman” for the Obama strategy to shift away from the drug war approach begun under Richard Nixon and refined under Ronald Reagan, Clinton, and both George Bushes.
As Biden’s first term nears the halfway point, he is still being asked by Republicans to atone for his role in a shift in federal drug policy, one notably unaltered by former President Trump.
Scott, who has called for Biden’s removal via the 25th Amendment, may not be the person to drive a change, especially given the ongoing back and forth the President and the Florida Senator are having about Scott’s plan to “rescue America,” described by Biden as an “ultra-MAGA agenda.”
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Read More:Rick Scott wants drug czar in Joe Biden’s Cabinet
2022-05-06 20:56:11
