Thomas Anthony Marino (born August 13, 1952) is an American politician and attorney, who served as a United States Representative from Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2019.
[1] He withdrew on October 17, 2017, following reports that he had been the chief architect behind a bill that protected pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors and crippled the DEA's ability to combat the U.S. opioid epidemic.
[2] Two weeks after being sworn in for his fifth term, Marino announced his resignation from Congress, effective January 23, 2019, to work in the private sector.
[7] In 2007, the new U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Peter Smith, confirmed that neither Marino, nor his office, were ever under review or investigation.
He won the three-candidate Republican primary with 41% of the vote, defeating Dave Madeira (31%) and Snyder County Commissioner Malcolm Derk (28%).
It lost its suburban territory closer to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, in the process losing its last connection to longtime congressman Joseph McDade, who represented the district from 1961 to 1999.
The new district was no less Republican than its predecessor, and Marino easily won a fifth term, defeating Democrat Marc Friedenberg with 66 percent of the vote.
[14] Marino described his decision to resign as follows: "Having spent over two decades serving the public, I have chosen to take a position in the private sector where I can use both my legal and business experience to create jobs around the nation.
This came after Trump's decision not to endorse former Congressman Lou Barletta in the Republican primary election for Governor of Pennsylvania.
[21] In October 2017, The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reported that Marino was the chief advocate of a 2016 bill that hobbled the ability of the Drug Enforcement Administration to combat the opioid epidemic.
[22] Marino introduced the bill, the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, in 2014 and again in 2015; it failed both times.
A similar version introduced in the Senate by Orrin Hatch passed both houses of Congress by unanimous consent and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 19, 2016.
[23] The legislation aimed to weaken the DEA's authority to take enforcement action against drug distributors who supplied unscrupulous physician and pharmacists with opioids for diversion to the black market.
[24] When Joseph Rannazzisi, the chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s Office of Diversion Control, strongly criticized the bill, Marino and his cosponsor Marsha Blackburn demanded that the drug diversion enforcer be investigated by the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.
[24][25][26] According to The New York Times, Blackburn's best known legislation was that bill which revised the legal standard that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had used to establish that "a significant and present risk of death or serious bodily harm that is more likely than not to occur," rather than the previous tougher standard of "imminent danger," before suspending the manufacturer's opioid drug shipments.
[22] Rannazzisi said he informed Blackburn's staffers precisely what the effects would be as a result of the passage of a 2016 law the two sponsored, as national awareness grew regarding a crisis in the prescriptions of opioids in the United States.
He said that during a July 2014 conference call he informed congressional staffers the bill would cause more difficulties for the DEA if it pursued corporations which were illegally distributing such drugs.