The opioid epidemic is the bastard child of the Trump administration. Nobody loves it, nobody wants it, and it keeps getting passed from hand to hand. Originally, solving the opioid crisis was entrusted to Jared Kushner, along with achieving peace in the Middle East. Then it was given to Melania, and was her cause celebre for about a week. Melania apparently didn’t want it and so it went to Kellyanne Conway, and now it is in the lap of a young man only a year out of college, Taylor Weyeneth.
Weyeneth is a frat boy and organizer of golf tournaments who volunteered on the Trump campaign. Weyeneth’s very brief work history shows him only doing administrative work, never making policy decisions, but be that as it may he is now White House Liasion for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a $350Million program which is committed to solving the biggest opioid crisis in the nation’s history. He will be advising Donald Trump on what to do.
Washington Post:
Weyeneth’s ascent from a low-level post to deputy chief of staff is the result, in large part, of staff turnover and vacancies. The story of his appointment and remarkable rise provides insight into the Trump administration’s political appointments and the troubled state of the drug policy office.
After being contacted by The Post about Weyeneth’s qualifications, and about inconsistencies on his résumés, an administration official said Weyeneth will return to the position he initially held in the agency, as a White House liaison for ONDCP, a job that typically involves working with outside interest groups. The official, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that Weyeneth has been primarily performing administrative work, rather than making policy decisions, and that he had “assumed additional duties and an additional title following staff openings.”
“It sends a terrible message,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who ran the office during the Obama administration and is a former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. “It’s a message that we’re not taking this drug issue seriously.”
This is merely grist for the mill in the Trump administration. Another day, another disastrous appointee.