After an unsuccessful run for president followed by an epic and humiliating ass-kissing of Donald Trump, Chris Christie is finally getting his White House job, sort of.
According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump is tapping the New Jersey governor to chair a commission devoted to combatting opioid abuse in America.
The position will be a part-time, volunteer job and will not require Christie to step down as New Jersey’s governor. Sorry, New Jersey.
Christie has been working with Trump’s son-in-law and New Jersey native Jared Kushner on the issue, despite long-running reports of friction between the two of them, according to the Washington Post.
One of Trump’s campaign goals was to stem the country’s opioid crisis.
The new office, known as the White House Office of American Innovation, is being called a “SWAT team” (poor choice of acronym) of consultants and business leaders that will have broad power to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill campaign goals, according to the Washington Post.
Apparently, Kushner and Christie have been working together informally for several weeks on the topic.
Will They Take On Big Pharma?
With numerous reports available on the successful use of cannabis for pain relief and other reports on how truly addictive opioids are, one wonders if these two men will take on the source of the problem: Big Pharma’s insatiable greed.
Will they deal with Big Pharma’s nasty habit of aggressively pushing pain pills with misinformation about how addictive and dangerous these drugs really are?
Science Deniers
Even though Christie, one of the most unpopular governors in New Jersey’s modern history, has vowed to devote much of his final year as governor on the issue, he is still closed to the benefits of medical marijuana for chronic pain relief.
While he has said, “I am ready to work with and listen to anyone with more ideas on how to address this issue,” and that he is open to “ideas from any corner of this state, from any political party and from any level of government,” medical marijuana is not one of the ideas he wants to hear much about.
When a panel in New Jersey of MMJ patients brought up the 2014 Johns Hopkins study finding a 25 percent decrease in prescription drug overdoses in states with legal MMJ, Christie still refused to accept science.
I guess that means Christie will fit right in with the rest of the science deniers in the White House.
