WaPo | In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S.
history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement
Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies
suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets.
By then, the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. Overdose deaths continue to rise. There is no end in sight.
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, according to an investigation by The Washington
Post and “60 Minutes.” The DEA had opposed the effort for years.
The law was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by
the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against
drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and
pharmacists who peddled narcotics to the black market. The industry
worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress,
pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino,a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
(R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.
For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring
warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of
millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales.
The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze
suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal
agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by
the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law
review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately
prevent drugs from reaching the street.
