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The new White House drug czar has quite an idea for where to put nonviolent drug users

Reporter
April 12, 2017 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) testifies during a House Human Resources subcommittee hearing last year.

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) will be President Trump's drug czar, according to a report from CBS News. Marino's congressional voting record is that of a hard-liner on marijuana issues, and he recently said that he'd like to put nonviolent drug offenders in some sort of “hospital-slash-prison.”

As drug czar, Marino would oversee the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a branch of the White House that advises the president on drug policy issues. More than anything else, the office sets the tone of an administration's drug policy. Under President Barack Obama, for instance, the office quite publicly retired the phrase “war on drugs,” preferring rhetoric centered more on public health than criminal justice.