OCTOBER 15, 2017
After years of being lobbied by drug manufacturers, Congress last year stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most effective tool to police drug distributors, “even as the opioid epidemic raged and thousands of Americans were dying of overdoses.” So says The Washington Post, introducing its report of a joint investigation with CBS’s “60 Minutes” found.
“A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills,” the Post reports. “The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress, pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.”
The story notes that millions of pills were sent to Mingo County, West Virginia by Miami-Luken Inc. of Springboro, Ohio. “Many went to one pharmacy in Williamson, the county seat, population 2,924,” the Post reports. “In one month alone, Miami-Luken shipped 258,000 hydrocodone pills to the pharmacy, more than 10 times the typical amount for a West Virginia pharmacy. The mayor of Williamson has since filed a lawsuit against Miami-Luken and other drug distributors, accusing them of flooding the city with pain pills and permitting them to saturate the black market.”
The bill requires the DEA to show that a “substantial likelihood of an immediate threat” of death, serious bodily harm or drug abuse before it can freeze drug shipments. It passed the House and Senate by unanimous consent, a non-debating procedure usually “reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial,” the Post reports.
“The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.” However, the Post and CBS report that Attorney General Eric Holder warned that an earlier version of the bill would undermine DEA’s ability to block suspicious drug shipments. Obama and Loretta Lynch, attorney general at the time, declined to be interviewed.
Near the start of the process, Joe Rannazzisi, who ran DEA’s program to keep drugs from being diverted for illegal purposes, told congressional staffers, “You’ll be protecting criminals.” DEA’s already poor relationship with Congress went downhill, the bill passed the House, the DEA administrator resigned for unrelated reasons, Rannazzisi lost his job, and the agency “was forced to accept a deal it did not want” in the Senate, CBS reports. “The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies.”
Republicans Tom Marino of Pennsylvania and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee sponsored the bill, drafted by a former DEA lawyer who went to work for drug companies and now works for Cardinal Health, the distributor that pushed back earliest and hardest on DEA enforcement efforts. on It was steered through the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. President Trump has nominated Marino to be head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Marino’s staff called the U.S. Capitol Police when the Post and ’60 Minutes’ tried to interview the congressman at his office on Sept. 12,” the Post reports. UPDATE, Oct. 16: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has asked Trump to withdraw Marino’s nomination.
DEA had fined Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. millions for filling suspicious orders. AmerisourceBergen is the other major drug distributor in the U.S. CBS’s Bill Whitaker asked Rannazzisi, “These big companies knew they were pumping drugs into American communities that were killing people?” Rannazzisi replied, “That’s a fact. . . . This is an industry that’s out of control.”
The Post reports, “The DEA and Justice Department have denied or delayed more than a dozen requests filed by the Post and ’60 Minutes’ under the Freedom of Information Act for public records that might shed additional light on the matter. Some of those requests have been pending for nearly 18 months. The Post is now suing the Justice Department in federal court for some of those records.”
Written by Al Cross
