“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
― Adolf Hitler
DEA Secretly OKs Killer Quantities of Oxy and Morphine
The feds could choke off the supply of pills flooding American streets tomorrow. Instead, they let Big Pharma crank out 151 tons of it last year.
The federal government is actively fueling a killer drug epidemic behind closed doors.
The Drug Enforcement Administration—tasked with fighting the war on drugs—has for the past two decades approved ever-greater quantities of controlled substances like oxycodone for manufacture and sale in the U.S. by pharmaceutical companies.
In 1993, the DEA allowed pharmaceutical companies to manufacture 3,520 kilograms of oxycodone. In 2015, the DEA authorized production of 137,500 kilograms of oxycodone. That’s a 39-fold increase in 22 years, the equivalent of turning two Buicks into four Boeing 737s. Either Americans are in 39 times more pain than we were 20 years ago, or something else is wrong.
When I was researching my book, American Pain, about a young drug felon who hired a team of doctors and made millions selling oxycodone to addicts posing as pain patients, I dug up the staggering drug manufacturing numbers.
I learned that it isn’t just oxycodone production that the DEA has been jacking up each year. Between 1993 and 2015, the DEA has allowed the production of hydrocodone to increase 12-fold, the production of hydromorphone to increase 23-fold, and the production of fentanyl to increase 25-fold.
(While the DEA did reduce the oxy quota by 8 percent in 2015, possibly because fewer pill mills were around to sell the drugs, the DEA recently announced a small increase in next year’s quota.)
The secret process appears to be less hard bargaining and more rubber-stamping. Each pharmaceutical company applies to make a certain amount of a given controlled substance each year, but the DEA won’t reveal those numbers to the public. The companies and the DEA have negotiation meetings, the content of which is also not made public. The DEA then sets quotas based on “expected need.” The only information the DEA reveals each year is the total amounts requested by the entire industry and the total amounts the DEA is allowing them to produce. The DEA says it would be unfair to the pharmaceutical companies to reveal how many pills the individual companies wanted to manufacture.
These are the same pharmaceutical companies that in the mid-1990s began marketing opioids as safe, i.e., little to no potential for abuse, contradicting thousands of years of human experience with the opium poppy. They’re the same companies that launched massive campaigns to convince doctors that highly addictive narcotics were a first resort for patients with chronic pain.
Since 1999 there have been more than 221,000 fatal overdoses from prescription opiods and illegal heroin. Despite this grim toll, no one in the federal government seems interested in simply reducing the supply. Instead, the DEA and its partners in government have supported policies only if they do not step on Big Pharma’s production, like arresting doctors who prescribe pills for no good reason and funding drug-treatment programs.
Only one time this century, when the country was first becoming aware of OxyContin abuse, was there talk about choking off the drug supply.
In 2001, the DEA asked Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, to consider providing the drug only to physicians trained in pain management. Purdue balked and Donnie R. Marshall, the then-DEA administrator, told Congress he was considering “rolling back those quotas to 1996 levels.” The pain industry said this would make drug prices skyrocket and pain patients suffer. Purdue didn’t budge, and the quota-cut idea vanished when new administrators came in.
Instead, the DEA has gone after bit players instead of Big Pharma. When hundreds of pill mills popped up in Florida after 2008, the DEA and other federal agencies cracked down hard, sending many owners and doctors away for long prison sentences.
That drove up pill prices, and millions of newly minted painkiller addicts began seeking their fixes from heroin. Painkiller production and deaths have leveled off for the moment, but fatal heroin overdoses have quadrupled, driving home the point that, whether the drugs come from the street or a pharmacy, the opioid epidemic is far from over.
Either Americans are in 39 times more pain than we were 20 years ago, or something else is wrong.
The DEA was created in 1973 by President Nixon to fight an “all-out global war on the drug menace.” Soon after it actually did that with success. When speed was popular in the ’70s, the DEA cut the amphetamine production quota by 90 percent and the illicit market dried up. A decade later, sedative-hypnotics like Quaaludes swept across the country, and the DEA cut the quota of the methaqualone by 74 percent, which effectively erased the problem.
Now, prescription opioids are killing far more people than speed or sedatives ever did, but the government has signed off on enormous hikes in the drug supply almost every year.
The idea of making more drugs during a drug epidemic baffled previous DEA administrators like the late Gene Haislip, former head of the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control. Haislip was in charge during the Quaalude crackdown. It hadn’t been easy to buck the powerful pharmaceutical industry, but, as he told a reporter shortly before his death: “You’ve got to have some kind of principles.”
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Nobody is suggesting we do away with opioids altogether: They are a godsend for patients suffering from cancer or traumatic injuries. At the very least though, the DEA could use its quota power to force drug companies to make sure their addictive wares aren’t heading to the street. It’s a potent warning: Sell drugs to pill mills and we’ll cut your company’s quota in half.
Even the drug manufacturers who have ignored deaths, lawsuits, and fines might heed that threat.
John Temple is an associate professor of journalism at West Virginia University and the author of American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Team of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic (Lyons Press, September 2015). Parts of this column were adapted from American Pain.
Filed under: General Problems
Quote: “Nobody is suggesting we do away with opioids altogether: They are a godsend for patients suffering from cancer or traumatic injuries. At the very least though, the DEA could use its quota power to force drug companies to make sure their addictive wares aren’t heading to the street. It’s a potent warning: Sell drugs to pill mills and we’ll cut your company’s quota in half.”
Doctors offices aren’t typically dispensing medication. Pharmacies are. Pharmacies are usually the ones to catch onto a pill mill first and reporting them to the state of they suddenly notice that they’re filling multiple prescriptions from a new doctor in their system (or notice that say, a pediatrician, is suddenly prescribing opioids at unusually high quantities for several patients). Then you have the “imposter doctor”, somebody that is practicing medicine without a license for a few weeks/months before moving onto a new area.
I know you wrote this in 2015, back when prescriptions for opiates were at the highest, but prescriptions have gone down yet the death toll is rising. There are 2 opiates behind the current “opioid hysteria”, neither of which are prescribed not available by prescription; heroin and a form of fentanyl that is being imported (and causing ODs – including Prince’s death). OxyContin, oxycodone, morphine, Fentanyl (the legally prescribed one), Dilaudid, etc aren’t causing the deaths right now. Even you mixed the two up when you said: “Since 1999 there have been more than 221,000 fatal overdoses from prescription opioids and illegal heroin.”. What you need to (and should want to) fight for are the actual numbers of deaths caused by the deceased patient’s prescription medication. This actually isn’t as difficult as it is made to sound. When somebody dies due to OD, there is typically an inquiry into their pharmacological records. That is then compared to the toxicology report.
As of right now, are you aware that the government statistics include anybody that died with even a trace amount of an opiate in their system? Somebody that is a passenger of a vehicle involved in an accident with a trace of an opiate in their system is counted as an “opiate related death”. The person could’ve just given birth and discharged, the medications in the epidural will show up! The person could’ve just gotten a shot of pain medication following surgery while in the recovery area. Trace amount of opiate medication? Added to the death toll. Nowhere will you see the media discussing the difference between street drugs (heroin & the “fake” fentanyl) and actual, legal, prescription medication deaths.
Due to the hysteria, patients with chronic or intractable pain are being cut down to a level that no longer enables them to continue working, volunteering, or in many cases…take a shower or use the toilet without assistance. Patients with severe pain being cut off are committing suicide at high levels. Surgical patients are waking up in severe pain and being given either Tylenol, Ibuprofen or Gabapentin. Cancer patients are also getting taken off of opiates, many of them are running into problems too. Then we have patients that are actually/actively DYING and being told that they can’t have morphine because, get this, they could become addicted during their final DAYS (I wish I were making this up!).
I beg you to do the research into what is truly going on. By the way, leave it to me to miss the name of this page until after writing everything out, I just noticed it. You’re a pharmacist!? Yet you mentioned that doctors offices should be limited with how much medication they can have? You, especially you, should know this isn’t how things work (are you not working retail?). You should know the two leading opiates causing the deaths. It isn’t anything that you’re filling. It is mostly the (illicit/imported/made in China) “fentanyl” that is being used to make fake pills and “cut” their “product” (street drugs) with to make a higher profit. They don’t care if a few of their customers OD. That’s advertising that they have a stronger product.
I used to work retail pharmacy until I became ill (thank goodness I was able to get the rest of my student loans forgiven!), and now I volunteer at a homeless shelter for families with minor children as often as I can and I volunteer at a soup kitchen a few times a year, usually holidays. I hear things. I definitely see things. I just want the truth to be shared instead of just this huge misconception regarding pain medication thanks to the constant “in your face and very incorrect” reporting that the media seems to love.
Fortunately I have a pain management specialist and a pharmacist that is fantastic. My pharmacist is absolutely part of my medical team, not just another face behind the drive through window. After I had surgery and my pain level went down, I was able to cut my medication by 70%. I’ve gone back up, but I’m still 30% lower than before I had surgery 7½ years ago (currently 110MME). Should I mention my red hair? You might not get what red hair has, so I’ll leave it. I’ve written more than enough. Heck, I may have written more than what you did.
Take care Steve. Please keep in mind, we’re not invincible. I certainly remember dealing with patients I figured were addicts and junkies. One that jumped over the counter to attack me. Fortunately my colleague was just coming in for the night. I would’ve been in worse shape if not for him grabbing the patient off of me (over Xanax).
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