Smith: Yes … . He is a disaster to the department. He is doing damage that will take years to restore, recover from.
Q. If he doesn’t resign, what can be done to protect access to mental health prescription medications?
Smith: I’m doing everything that I can think of to try to protect that access … [We have to] make sure that he doesn’t use the Centers for Disease Control and the [Food and Drug Administration] to undermine the best science about when SSRIs should be prescribed. With vaccines … he’s basically saying “Well, go ahead and take a vaccine, but we’re not recommending that vaccine anymore.” And that means that insurance companies won’t pay for it. And that means people have less access. And that’s very, very dangerous. We have to guard against him doing anything like that with other medications, including SSRIs. And then, of course, people listen to what he says. And if there are people out there who think that SSRIs aren’t safe, just like they are thinking that vaccines aren’t safe, they won’t get the medication they need. That could have terrible impacts on their health, so that’s why it’s so important to stand up to him.