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The Opioid Crisis: The Drug Industry's Triumph over the DEA

deac_tracy

deac_tracy

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...rug-industry-congress/?utm_term=.9e6e2bb3a149

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. As Rep. Tom Marino’s Pennsylvania district was reeling from the opioid crisis, he sponsored a bill that undermined the Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to stop the flow of pain pills.

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.
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Corruption at it's finest.
 
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/

In the end, the DEA signed off on the final version of the "Marino bill." A senior DEA representative told us the agency fought hard to stop it, but in the face of growing pressure from Congress and industry lobbyists, was forced to accept a deal it did not want. The bill was presented to the Senate in March of 2016.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the legislation and it passed the Senate through unanimous consent with no objections and no recorded votes.

It passed the House the same way, with members of Congress chatting away on the floor.

A week later, with no objections from Congress or the DEA, President Barack Obama signed it into law without ceremony or the usual bill signing photo-op. Marino issued a press release the next day claiming credit for the legislation.

The drug distributors declared victory and told us the new law would in no way limit DEA's enforcement abilities. But DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney, who must adjudicate the law, wrote in a soon-to-be-published Marquette Law Review article we obtained, that the new legislation "would make it all but...impossible" to prosecute unscrupulous distributors.
 
thatguy2016 said:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/

In the end, the DEA signed off on the final version of the "Marino bill." A senior DEA representative told us the agency fought hard to stop it, but in the face of growing pressure from Congress and industry lobbyists, was forced to accept a deal it did not want. The bill was presented to the Senate in March of 2016.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the legislation and it passed the Senate through unanimous consent with no objections and no recorded votes.

It passed the House the same way, with members of Congress chatting away on the floor.

A week later, with no objections from Congress or the DEA, President Barack Obama signed it into law without ceremony or the usual bill signing photo-op. Marino issued a press release the next day claiming credit for the legislation.

The drug distributors declared victory and told us the new law would in no way limit DEA's enforcement abilities. But DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney, who must adjudicate the law, wrote in a soon-to-be-published Marquette Law Review article we obtained, that the new legislation "would make it all but...impossible" to prosecute unscrupulous distributors.
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Bills like this will result in the death of thousands Americans. Fuck you Mitch McConnell and anyone else that signed off on it.
 
Story is incredibly depressing.

The law at issue passed both the Senate and the House unanimously (on a voice vote) in 2016, and Obama signed the law after it passed. Not one dissenting voice among 535 congressman and senators or among those in the Obama administration. Not a single one. Everyone had their hand in the cookie jar.

In addition to Marino, another main sponsor of the bill was congresswoman Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee (she has announced that she is running for Corker's open Senate seat). Naturally, pharmaceutical companies had donated tons of cash to her over the past few years. Blackburn is now claiming the law had unintended consequences. Fuck her. She and every congressperson that sponsored this bill and/or let the law pass without scrutiny has blood on their hands for the constituents that died so that Big Pharma could rake in epic amounts of cash in sales from shady opioid dispensaries all over the US. Really not a difference between the politicians that passed this legislation to the detriment of the public after receiving cash from pharmaceutical companies, and corrupt politicians in Columbia and Mexico that take money from drug cartels to allow/promote the sales of heroin and/or cocaine.
 
Yeah, they interviewed some Trumpsters in Marino's district that had lost their kid to dug addiction and were asked what they wanted done about it. The guy along with his wife said they wanted "Donald" to look into turning that law back.

Pal I have some news for you, big Don doesn't give 2 shits about your loss and he doesn't care about you either. You are the definition of a sucker born every day and Trump is gonna prove that by sucking this country dry.
 
Everyone/everything is for sale to the highest bidder. This is what the GOP has always wanted, and Barack Obama himself signed the fucking thing. Bunch of assholes
 
WakeandBake said:
Everyone/everything is for sale to the highest bidder. This is what the GOP has always wanted, and Barack Obama himself signed the fucking thing. Bunch of assholes
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including, and most crucially in this case, the actual talent that worked for the DEA

big pharma adopted the policy that if we can't beat them, we'll just hire away all their top enforcers - and I mean all their top enforcers

what's a few million in salaries and inducements when you are shipping 9 million pills (not hyperbole) to one pharmacy in Kermit WV?

They saw distributors shipping thousands of suspicious orders. One example: a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, ordered nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.
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The map of the US showing where opioid pills were sent was jarring. Total saturation bombing in rural America. These companies knew that they were killing people, and rather than reign it in, took steps to ensure that they could accelerate sales without fear of prosecution, particularly in under-educated areas where people would be the most susceptible to addiction and where the local authorities lacked the sophistication and/or the wherewithal to call out the problems that the opioid sales created. Evilness without bounds.
 
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Still waiting on conservatives to call out the personal responsibility needed from these rural white people. I read a lot on these boards about single family households being a problem in the AA community, with the solution being personal responsibility. I have yet to read (apologies if I missed it) the same condemnation of the detrimental choices being made by rural whites.
 
Whether there is a D or R in front of peoples names, the dirty secret is everybody is playing for team cash, and all of them are already bought. This kind of thing made me become so disenfranchised with Obama. As a first time voter in 2008 I thought he was going to be different..... NOPE.

Meet the new boss same as the old boss.
 
Coach O said:
Still waiting on conservatives to call out the personal responsibility needed from these rural white people. I read a lot on these boards about single family households being a problem in the AA community, with the solution being personal responsibility. I have yet to read (apologies if I missed it) the same condemnation of the detrimental choices being made by rural whites.
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Stop doing drugs rural whites
 
Coach O said:
Still waiting on conservatives to call out the personal responsibility needed from these rural white people. I read a lot on these boards about single family households being a problem in the AA community, with the solution being personal responsibility. I have yet to read (apologies if I missed it) the same condemnation of the detrimental choices being made by rural whites.
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Ummmmm republicans are the party of the drug war, mass incarceration of drug users etc... white or black. I don’t understand your point, but I appreciate you feeling the need to inject race in the conversation, very socially aware of you.
 
What's great is the Rep. from PA is Trump's pick for Drug Czar. Way to do your homework!
 
Pilchard said:
The map of the US showing where opioid pills were sent was jarring. Total saturation bombing in rural America. These companies knew that they were killing people, and rather than reign it in, took steps to ensure that they could accelerate sales without fear of prosecution, particularly in under-educated areas where people would be the most susceptible to addiction and where the local authorities lacked the sophistication and/or the wherewithal to call out the problems that the opioid sales created. Evilness without bounds.
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Well, an overt sterilization plan wouldn't work today.
 
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