— The U.S. officially got a new drug czar on Monday.
On a vote of 92 to 0, the Senate approved Michael Botticelli for the post. He had been the acting drug czar since March of last year.
Botticelli, 57, will become the nation’s seventh drug czar, serving as President Barack Obama’s top drug policy adviser.
Botticelli, who cleared the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, rose to prominence as the head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
He will head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, replacing Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who left the job to become commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Botticelli, a New York native, wants to focus on more treatment and prevention efforts and to do more to fight heroin and prescription drug abuse.
He has been in recovery himself for more than a quarter century, after a 1988 drunken-driving accident in Massachusetts led him to stop drinking.
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