Slashdot: Can Oklahoma Return Its $2 Million Stockpile of Hydroxychloroquine?

Can Oklahoma Return Its $2 Million Stockpile of Hydroxychloroquine?
Published on January 30, 2021 at 10:04PM
A nonprofit watchdog news site in Tulsa, Oklahoma reports: The Oklahoma Attorney General's Office has been tasked with attempting to return a $2 million stockpile of a malaria drug once touted by former President Donald Trump as a way to treat the coronavirus. In April, Gov. Kevin Stitt, who ordered the hydroxychloroquine purchase, defended it by saying that while it may not be a useful treatment for the coronavirus, the drug had multiple other uses and "that money will not have gone to waste in any respect." But nearly a year later the state is trying to offload the drug back to its original supplier, California-based FFF Enterprises, Inc, a private pharmaceutical wholesaler... It's unclear yet how much of the initial $2 million investment in the hydroxychloroquine the state could recoup. "While governments in at least 20 other states obtained more than 30 million doses of the drug through donations from the federal reserve or private companies, Oklahoma and Utah bought them from private pharmaceutical companies," notes ABC News: Then-Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, initially defended the state's $800,000 purchase of 20,000 packets of hydroxychloroquine compounded with zinc, but later canceled an additional plan to spend $8 million more to buy 200,000 more treatments. The state then managed to secure a refund on the $800,000 no-bid contract it signed with a local pharmacy company that had been promoting the drugs. The CEO of the pharmacy company has since pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor for mislabeling the drug imported from China.

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