The White House has a pharmacy — and it was a mess, a new investigation found

There’s a pharmacy in the White House — or, at least, there’s a sign that says “Pharmacy,” though the people in charge insist it isn’t one. Whatever they call it, the office has had enough internal complaints to warrant a government watchdog investigation.

And its findings were hardly encouraging:

• One former pharmacy staff member told investigators that a doctor once asked if the staffer could “hook up” someone with a controlled substance “as a parting gift for leaving the White House.”
• The office dispensed controlled medications like Ambien and Provigil without verifying the patient’s identity.
• It let people grab over-the-counter medicines from open bins.
• And upwards of $640,000 in taxpayer funds were wasted in just three years, though that number is fuzzy, because so many records were poorly kept and even handwritten.

The investigation, published this month, was conducted by the Department of Defense’s independent Office of the Inspector General; the White House pharmacy is run by the White House Military Office and its associated medical unit. The probe was prompted by complaints the Department of Defense received in 2018 about a senior military medical officer, who is not named, engaging in “improper medical practices.” It covers only activity in the office through early 2020 under the Trump administration, but investigators interviewed staffers who also worked there under former President Obama.

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