Big Pharma's "Stranglehold" on Congress Worsening Opioid Epidemic

If it seems like Big Pharma has escaped accountability for its role in perpetuating the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic, those suspicions are not unfounded.

According to a former top Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official, the industry’s influence over Congress has successfully quashed efforts to regulate the pharmaceutical drug market aiding an unprecedented addiction to legal drugs.

“When you sit with a parent who can’t understand why there’s so many pharmaceuticals out in the illicit marketplace, and why isn’t the government doing anything, well the DEA was doing something. Unfortunately what we’re trying to do is thwarted by people who are writing laws,” Joseph Rannazzisi, who for 10 years served as head of the DEA’s Diversion Control Division, told the Guardian.

In an exclusive investigation published on Monday, the Guardian, with Rannazzisi’s help, explains how Congress turned its back on suffering families and, under the guise of combating the national epidemic, has routinely passed legislation that effectively shields the industry.

One such law is the recently-passed Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, which “requires the DEA to warn pharmacies and distributors if they are in breach of regulations”—namely “crooked doctors and pharmacists” in suspicion of over-prescribing prescription drugs—”and to give them a chance to comply before licenses are withdrawn,” the Guardian reports.

Rannazzisi declared the new law a “gift to the industry,” explaining how it does neither of the things it purports to do. “This doesn’t ensure patient access and it doesn’t help drug enforcement at all,” he said. “What this bill does is take away DEA’s ability to go after a pharmacist, a wholesaler, manufacturer or distributor.”

“The bill passed because ‘Big Pharma’ wanted it to pass,” he added. “When I was in charge what I tried to do was explain to my investigators and my agents that our job was to regulate the industry and they’re not going to like being regulated.”

The Washington Post has also been reporting on the drop in enforcement actions against pharmaceutical distributors, dubbed “pill mills,” which it said was due in part to “resistance from higher-level Justice Department officials who were being heavily lobbied by the wholesalers.”

“Congress would rather listen to people who had a profit motive rather than a public health and safety motive.”
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