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Harsh Words Back Home for Tom Marino, Congressman Tied to Opioid Law

Representative Tom Marino, Republican of Pennsylvania, withdrew as President Trump’s drug czar nominee after he was linked to a controversial opioid law.Credit...Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Amber Hamilton had scathing words for her congressman, Representative Tom Marino, after learning he had championed a law that critics say makes it easier for opioids to enter the black market.

“Does he even care about his people?” said Ms. Hamilton, 37. Like Mr. Marino, she is a native of Williamsport, a small city in central Pennsylvania that is best known as the birthplace of Little League baseball, but that is now confronting an opioid blight running deeply and broadly through its picturesque valleys.

For Ms. Hamilton, like many others here, the issue is both stark and personal. A mother of two and a recovering addict, she got hooked on pain pills after surgery more than a decade ago, then turned to heroin. “I don’t want my kids to have the life I have,” she said after leaving a clinic near the bus terminal, where she picks up medicine to stave off cravings. “And I want a politician, whoever is going to be in charge and represent Williamsport, to care about the community and want to make it better, not worse.”

Mr. Marino, a Republican, withdrew as President Trump’s nominee for drug czar on Tuesday after news reports that the pharmaceutical industry contributed close to $100,000 to his campaign while he shepherded a law making opioids more easily available in the midst of a national crisis.

Asked about the reports on Monday at the White House, Mr. Trump said, “We’re going to be looking into Tom.”

Since the president pledged in August to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency, he has been criticized for not following through. He added on Monday that he planned to make a “major announcement” on the subject next week.

In Williamsport, reactions were almost universally harsh.

“His hand got caught in the cookie jar,” Robert Gibbs, a retired shipping clerk and a Democrat, said of Mr. Marino.

Residents described how drugs had changed the city. Local hospitals treated 51 overdoses in a 48-hour period in June. A juror on a smoking break outside the county courthouse called Williamsport “little Philadelphia” because of its drug problem. Adrienna Snyder, a postal worker, said businesses on her downtown route now lock their restrooms to keep people from dying in them.

State Senator Gene Yaw, a Republican from Williamsport, who has been a leader in the Legislature on opioid issues, said the strong Republican lean of Mr. Marino’s 10th District might not be enough to ensure his re-election if he seeks a fifth term next year.

“The drug problem is nonpartisan,” Mr. Yaw said. “There’s no question the pharmaceutical companies have contributed to it.’’ He said the controversy over Mr. Marino’s withdrawal from consideration to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy was “not a plus” for his political future.

Mr. Yaw sponsored a bill in Harrisburg, the state capital, to restrict how many pain pills doctors can prescribe at once. It is meant to limit the amount of opioids in circulation — the opposite of what critics say is the effect of the legislation Mr. Marino promoted in Congress, known as the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.

Mr. Marino issued a statement on Tuesday expressing pride in the 2016 law, which passed by acclamation in the House and Senate and was signed by President Barack Obama.

He criticized the news media for distorting the bill, which he called “landmark legislation” that balances the needs of patients for pain medicine with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s powers to stop abuse.

On Sunday, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” revealed how the drug industry had worked behind the scenes with Mr. Marino on the law, helping to draft its language, hiring former D.E.A. lawyers as consultants and showering $1.5 million in donations to Congress.

The law weakened the D.E.A.’s power to stop prescription opioids from being shipped to rogue doctors and pharmacies suspected of corruptly distributing them. A flood of narcotics to “pill mills” has been a major cause of the opioid crisis. Many people who became addicted to prescription pills have turned to heroin since the authorities began tightening access to legal opioids.

On “60 Minutes,” a former top D.E.A. enforcement official, Joseph T. Rannazzisi, said, “I just don’t understand why Congress would pass a bill that strips us of our authority in the height of an opioid epidemic in places like Congressman Marino’s district.”

In his statement, Mr. Marino referred to Mr. Rannazzisi as “the subject of a professional conduct investigation” whose “assertions may be motivated by financial self-interest.”

Mr. Marino’s largely rural district, which stretches in a northern arc from the Susquehanna Valley to the Delaware Water Gap, on the New Jersey border, has been drawn to favor Republicans. Mr. Marino, a former county and federal prosecutor, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest supporters in Pennsylvania, won his race last year in a landslide.

A Democratic opponent, Judy Herschel, who is a drug and alcohol abuse counselor, has announced a challenge in the district next year, and the contrast ads over opioids seem inevitable.

Still, Michael Allison, a political scientist at the University of Scranton, said it was too early to know if Mr. Marino’s re-election prospects would suffer. He noted Mr. Marino first won his seat in 2010 even after resigning as a United States attorney under the cloud of a Justice Department investigation. Federal agents were looking into his role in helping to win a casino license for an accused mobster.

William Carlucci, 62, a lawyer in Williamsport, predicted that Mr. Marino would win easily if he ran. “I think he’s well liked,” he said.

Mr. Carlucci, who does commercial litigation, was conferring on the courthouse steps with his adversary in a case, Megan Wells.

Ms. Wells, 30, described Mr. Marino’s role in the controversial legislation as a case of “the fox guarding the henhouse.”

Her law firm represents the interests of a neighboring county in cases in which children are removed from the custody of parents with drug addictions. “We are seeing an astounding number of grandparents stepping in to take custody,” she said. “Things are worse now than they’ve been. It’s just so pervasive.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Harsh Words Back Home for Congressman Who Helped Loosen Opioid Controls. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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