Amazing 60 Minutes piece on the opiod crisis, and how Big Pharma bought off the DEA's lawyers then sent lobbyists to Congress to stop the DEA from shutting down the painpill express.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agen...-congress/
*VIDEO*
https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-whistleblower/
In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed -- that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.
Despite arrests of unscrupulous purveyors, opioids kept flooding the black market. The death toll kept rising. This map shows the U.S. death rate from drug overdose in 1999. By 2015, the map looked like this. Most of these deaths were opioid related. Joe Rannazzisi told us prosecuting crooked doctors and pharmacists wasn't stemming the epidemic, so he decided to move up the food chain.
A distributor's representative told us the problem is not distributors but doctors who overprescribe pain medication, but the distributors know exactly how many pills go to every drug store they supply. And they are required under the Controlled Substances Act to report and stop what the DEA calls "suspicious orders" -- such as unusually large or frequent shipments of opioids. But DEA investigators say many distributors ignored that requirement.
As cases nearly ground to a halt at DEA, the drug industry began lobbying Congress for legislation that would destroy DEA's enforcement powers. That part of the story when we return.
In 2013, Joe Rannazzisi and his DEA investigators were trying to crack down on big drug distributors that ship drugs to pharmacies across the country. He accused them of turning a blind eye as millions of prescription pain pills ended up on the black market. Then, a new threat surfaced on Capitol Hill. With the help of members of Congress, the drug industry began to quietly pave the way for legislation that essentially would strip the DEA of its most potent tool in fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics.
JOE RANNAZZISI: If I was gonna write a book about how to harm the United States with pharmaceuticals, the only thing I could think of that would immediately harm is to take the authority away from the investigative agency that is trying to enforce the Controlled Substances Act and the regulations implemented under the act. And that's what this bill did.
The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed.
Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA's legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets -- what the DEA calls diversion.
Eric Holder was the attorney general at the time, he warned the new law would undermine law enforcement efforts to ''prevent communities and families from falling prey to dangerous drugs.'' The major drug companies -- distributors, chain drug stores and pharmaceutical manufacturers -- mobilized too. According to federal filings, during the two years the legislation was considered and amended, they spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation, claiming the DEA was out of control, making it harder for patients to get needed medication.
Some excerpts, much more at the link.
Home
RooshV.com
Search (Via Forum)
Member List
![[-]](images/collapse.gif)
The following 2 users Like DamienCasanova's post:
