Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will take a spot on the White House’s Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission, Bondi announced Wednesday.
Bondi will join former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who will lead the commission to search for solutions to opioid abuse nationwide.
“Thousands of Americans die each year from drug overdoses,” Bondi said in a statement. "I want to thank the President of the United States, Governor Christie and many others for caring about this deadly epidemic."
Trump said the commission would fight back against drug addiction nationwide, an epidemic which claims thousands of lives each year.
“We want to battle drug addiction and combat opioid [addiction] and we have to do it,” said Trump Wednesday.
Christie explained the commission would take their role seriously in defeating drug addiction in the U.S.
“I’m thrilled to work with the Attorney General on the issues of prevention and addiction to drugs so we don’t get people hooked on drugs in the first place,” Christie said. “Addiction is a disease.
One of the biggest undertakings of Bondi’s career as Florida Attorney General has been cracking down on Florida’s pill mills and drug abuse in the Sunshine State.
Under Bondi’s rule, the state shut down most of its pain clinics where doctors routinely illegally prescribed oxycodone pills.
Bondi has touted the pill mill crackdown as one of the highlights of her seven year-term as Attorney General.
That no-nonsense approach has resulted in another crisis for Florida, however: a heroin abuse epidemic which only seems to grow as time goes on.
The heroin epidemic is especially problematic in South Florida, where numbers of overdoses have skyrocketed, rising to levels comparable to the prescription pill abuse epidemic of 2010.
Some studies show that since Bondi’s pill mill crackdowns, Florida heroin deaths have increased significantly, jumping as high as 1250 percent.
Wednesday’s announcement comes as Bondi is widely rumored to be mulling over a move to Washington, leaving behind her career in the Sunshine State to take a job in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Bondi, a longtime fervent supporter of Trump, has been holed up in D.C. all week, an indicator she may be getting involved in Trump’s administration sooner rather than later.
Bondi made a quick trip to the Oval Office on Monday with former Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Tony Dungy and former Bucs linebacker Derrick Brooks Monday to meet Trump.
The trio posed for a photo with the president, smiling as the cameras flashed -- Bondi with a possible glimmer of a new career in Trump’s administration in her eye.
As for now, Bondi will lend a helping hand to the commission, trying to replicate her pill mill crackdown on the national scale with the country’s opiate-addiction crisis.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
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