Trump’s White House Medical Unit Gave Out Controlled Drugs To Unqualified Staff Members Violating Law, Pentagon I.G. Finds

The White House Medical Unit during Donald Trump‘s administration gave out drugs, including controlled substances, to ineligible staff members and spent tens of thousands of dollars on brand-name drugs.

According to a report from the Pentagon released earlier this year, the medical unit, which was part of the White House Military Office, did not abide by federal government and Department of Defense guidelines.

The report stated that the amount it spent on brand-name drugs was much more than the amount that generic equivalents would have cost.

It was discovered that ineligible staffers had been granted free specialty care and surgery at military medical facilities and that they were provided with prescription drugs, like controlled substances, which had been done in violation of federal law.

“The White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical management practices ineffectively used DoD funds by obtaining brand‑name medications instead of generic equivalents and increased the risk for the diversion of controlled substances,” the report stated.

The report noted that the unit did not have effective controls to guarantee compliance with safety standards, was not liable to be overseen by Military Health System leaders and escalated the risk to patients’ health and safety.

Additionally, it spent $46,500 from 2017-2019 on 8,900 unit doses of Ambien, a brand-name sleeping medication, which cost 174 times more than the $270 that its generic equivalent would have cost for a similar amount of doses.

The unit spent $98,000 on 4,180 unit doses of Provigil, a brand-name stimulant. The report discovered that this is 55 times more than the $1,800 that the price of the generic equivalent would have been.

As stated in the report, Ambien and Provigil were distributed without confirming the identities of the patients, and on top of that, opioids and sleeping medications were incorrectly accounted for and tracked using error-ridden or illegible handwritten records.

The report displays the findings of the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General, which investigated the medical unit from September 2019 through February 2020 after hearing a complaint back in 2018.

It spans form 2009 to 2018, and therefore covers the presidential administrations of both Barack Obama and Trump.

However, most of its findings focus on 2017-2019, back when Trump was president.

The assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Lester Martinez-Lopez, responded to the report’s findings by sending a memo to the Inspector General agreeing with all of its recommendations.

From January to September 2019, the medical unit made four different orders of fentanyl, two orders of morphine and another two orders of ketamine. Records show that, overall, it obtained 34 packs of fentanyl over these nine months.

Fentanyl has progressively become the leading driver of America’s opioid epidemic, with illegal supply thought to have been smuggled over the border, pushing calls from Democrats and even Trump for stricter controls.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) stated that fentanyl is responsible for more than 70% of drug overdose deaths among U.S. adults aged 18 to 45.

“This was just a clinic, and didn’t do any major procedures which required even moderate sedation,” Brian Krassenstein, a commentator, wrote on X of the report.

Trump’s White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, raised eyebrows with his oddly enthusiastic conclusions about Trump’s health that were even mocked on Saturday Night Live.

Jackson was later forced out of his job due to reports of public drunkenness and sexual harassment. Trump nominated him to be Veterans Administration secretary but was forced to withdraw the nomination. Jackson was later elected as a congressman from Texas as a strong Trump ally.