The White House Candy Man

Could a political scandal about breaking the law to indulge in substance use sink Trump's candidacy the same way it sunk Boris Johnson's premiership? Grant Stern examines the evidence.

The North Portico of the White House blanketed by fresh show, 16 January, 2024. Photo: Adam Schultz/White House Photo/Alamy

America’s Defense Department just dropped a major bombshell that wasn’t delivered by drone, warship, or airplane. Rather its Inspector General revealed a new report with evidence of systemic abuse at the White House pharmacy, including two years of records from the Trump era indicative of opioid and amphetamine abuse, which was all they could obtain.

The long-simmering White House scandal dating back to the Trump era reveals an extraordinary parallel with the Partygate scandal which helped put an end to Britain’s rump Trumpocracy spotlighting Boris Johnson’s Covid-era Government flouting the rules while running the nation.

Instead of partaking in wine-filled garden parties while the UK was under lockdown, former President Trump’s White House doctors quietly obtained copious amounts of speed and opiates known as “controlled substances” and distributed them willy-nilly without any outside controls whatsoever.

Morphine, Codeine, Diazepam, Lorazepam, Midolazam, Ambien, Provigil, Ketamine, Tramadol, Fentanyl.

This isn’t the famous list of drugs for unhappiness and pain that Ewan MacGregor rattled off in the movie Trainspotting.

It is but a partial single list of the powerful drugs Donald Trump’s White House distributed without proper prescriptions, and in fact, with absolutely no oversight. Mixing stimulants and fentanyl is a leading cause of the “4th wave” of America’s opioid crisis reports the BBC.

Parallels between substance abuse issues revealed within right-wing elected governments in the US and those in the UK illuminate how both Trump and Johnson’s administrations acted with a shared disdain for some of society’s most basic controls; controls that they themselves enforced upon others when it came to the right time and manner to ingest lawful substances that can be abused.