“I wish every West Virginia pharmacist could have witnessed Congressman David McKinley (R) of the First Congressional District of our state rip into Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for continuing to post illegally operating on-line pharmacies during a mammoth hearing before United States congressional committees, April 10,” says WVPA Executive Director Richard Stevens, who monitored proceedings of the hearing.
Each congressman was given four (4) minutes to question Zuckerberg. “I bet he felt like it was four hours after McKinley finished with him,” Stevens adds.
“There are over 35,000 on-line pharmacies and the FDA believes 96 percent of them are operating illegally. In November of last year, CNBC aired an article saying you (Zuckerberg) were surprised by the breadth of this opioid crisis, but as you can see from these pictures, opioids are still available on your site,” said McKinley while displaying to the members of the committee and the audience pictures of Facebook ads for on-line pharmacies.
Zuckerberg offered no answer to McKinley’s criticism other than to agree Facebook needed to do a better job at policing some of the content on its service, but Congressman McKinley wasn’t done.
“We’ve got statements after statements about how you’re going to take those things down in days,” said McKinley. “That picture of illegal on-line drugs was from yesterday and it’s still up. My question to you is when are you going to take down these posts on illegal, digital pharmacies? When are you going to take them down?”
McKinley wrapped up grilling the Facebook CEO saying, “Those opioids are on your site. Your firm is circumventing the law. You’re hurting people. You did not take down these illegal drugs ravaging this country.” Zuckerberg sat silent.
