President Biden has selected Anne Milgram, a former state attorney general, prosecutor and longtime advocate for reform of the criminal justice system, to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, the White House announced on Monday.
Milgram, who once declared, “there’s no system that is more old-school and broken and problematic than the criminal justice system,” currently works as a lawyer in private practice, and as a law professor and podcaster.
Milgram did not respond to a request for comment. The Washington Post first reported Milgram’s selection.
The DEA has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. Former president Donald Trump relied on several acting administrators to steer the roughly $3 billion agency, which investigates violations of the nation’s drug laws.
In his presidential campaign, Biden criticized pharmaceutical companies for saturating the nation with opioid pills and vowed that he would direct the DEA “to identify suspicious shipments and protect communities” from potential drivers of the drug epidemic.
Health officials also have warned that the opioid crisis worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, and the Commonwealth Fund recently estimated that drug overdose deaths may have topped 90,000 last year, up from 70,630 in 2019.
“Addressing the overdose and addiction epidemic is an urgent issue facing the nation,” the White House said in a statement of its drug-policy priorities released this month. DEA officials last month also warned that traffickers continue to smuggle fentanyl, methamphetamines and other drugs into the country at high rates, helping fuel drug overdoses and deaths.
As the attorney general for the state of New Jersey, Milgram focused on using better crime data and overhauling the police department to significantly cut the murder rate in Camden, N.J. Earlier in her career, Milgram worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, and a civil rights prosecutor in the Justice Department.