Oklahoma officials are trying to shed $2 million of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug once touted by Trump

• Officials in Oklahoma are working to offload $2 million worth of unwanted hydroxychloroquine.
• Former President Donald Trump had championed the unproven drug that was later found ineffective for COVID-19.
• Oklahoma officials are attempting to sell the drug back to the distributor the state purchased it from.

Oklahoma officials are looking to sell $2 million worth of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug touted by former President Donald Trump that ultimately approved ineffective in treated COVID-19.

According to a report Tuesday from The New York Times, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has been asked to help the state health department offload the unused drug. The state is attempting to sell the dug back to FFF Enterprises, the California-based drug distributer it purchased the product from, according to the report.

Oklahoma is also considering selling the drug to another entity should it be unable to sell it back to FFF Enterprises, the Times reported. The state has been attempting to sell the drugs since at least July when an official told a local news outlet that it was working toward offloading the stockpile.

Oklahoma acquired the drug in spring 2020, the report said.

The US Food and Drug Administration last year authorized the drug for emergency use to help treat patients with severe cases of COVID-19 following anecdotal reports of success in lessening COVID-19 symptoms in some patients, though the agency in July revoked the authorization, saying subsequent research found the drug was "unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19."

Read more: How Trump could mount a presidential campaign even if he's banned from office

The agency also pointed toward potential serious side effects in some patients, specifically pointing toward concerns related to heart-related side effects of the drug, according to a previous Insider report.

Last year, especially in the early months of the pandemic reaching the US, Trump had touted the drug as a possible "miracle" for COVID-19 patients despite a lack of scientific proof that the antimalarial had any impact on the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The then-president even said he was taking the drug himself.

In an interview last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and current adviser to President Joe Biden, told The New York Times he became anxious when the former president touted anecdotal evidence and unproven claims, specifically referring to Trump's interest in hydroxychloroquine.

"I started getting anxious that this was not going in the right direction-the anecdotally driven situations, the minimization, the president surrounding himself with people saying things that didn't make any scientific sense," Fauci said.

"We would say things like: 'This is an outbreak…' And then he would get up and start talking about, 'It's going to go away, it's magical, it's going to disappear," he added.