Regina LaBelle, Acting Director, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

Regina LaBelle

Acting Director, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

Regina LaBelle earned an undergraduate degree from Boston College and received her Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. She was an adjunct professor of policy and ethics at the Seattle University Institute for Policy Studies for seven years. She served as legal counsel to the mayor of Seattle.

During President Obama’s administration, LaBelle worked as the chief of staff and senior policy advisor in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Thereafter, she served as the director for an interdisciplinary master’s of science in addiction policy and practice at Georgetown’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She became director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown.

In January 2021, President Biden named LaBelle the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House (often called the “drug czar”). She took a leave of absence from the O’Neill Institute to assume the White House position.

In the News…

In their latest statistics on opioids, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 73 percent of opioid deaths in 2019 came as a result of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. The agency said that deaths involving synthetic opioids rose 15 percent in one year from 2018 to 2019. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid originating primarily from China that is many times more potent than heroin, so potent that just two milligrams is enough to cause a fatal overdose in an adult male.

Last week, the acting director for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Regina Labelle, said, “We are pleased to present to Congress a long-term, consensus approach that advances efforts to reduce the supply and availability of illicitly manufactured fentanyl-related substances, FRS, while protecting civil rights and reducing barriers to scientific research for all schedule I substances.”

She added that the Department of Justice had only reported eight cases involving FRS charges between 2018 and 2020.

“The proposal would exclude those FRS that are scheduled by class from certain quantity-based mandatory minimum penalties normally associated with domestic trafficking, and import and export offenses of CSA schedule I compounds,” she added. “It would further ensure that a federal court can vacate or reduce the sentence of an individual convicted of an offense involving an individual FRS that is subsequently removed or rescheduled from Schedule I.”

Contact this Leader…

Did you pray for Director LaBelle today? You can let her know at:

Acting Director Regina LaBelle
Office of National Drug Control Policy 
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500


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