Senators demand better information from DEA on opioid campaign
Seven U.S. senators sharply criticized the Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday for failing to answer questions about enforcement actions against pharmaceutical companies accused of violating laws designed to prevent painkillers from reaching the black market.
“We received an insufficient response that ignored those questions almost entirely and recited boilerplate information about the DEA’s mission,” said the letter to the acting DEA administrator, Chuck Rosenberg.
The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The senators first sent the questions to the DEA in October after The Washington Post reported that the agency had slowed its enforcement efforts in the face of the opioid epidemic, which has cost nearly 180,000 lives since 2000. In 2015 alone, about 16,000 people died of prescription opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Post reported that beginning in 2013, DEA lawyers at headquarters started to delay and block enforcement efforts against large opioid distributors and others, requiring investigators in the field to meet a higher burden of proof before they could take action.
[DEA slowed enforcement as the opioid epidemic grew out of control]
Five former supervisors from the DEA’s Diversion Control Division told The Post in on-the-record interviews that they had become increasingly frustrated by the sharp drop in enforcement actions. They said their civil cases were suddenly being subjected to a higher standard of proof, similar to that required in criminal cases.
The supervisors’ concerns were confirmed by reports filed by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge, who found that the number of cases approved at headquarters was “stunningly low for a national program.”
DEA officials have declined to publicly explain why the agency’s enforcement efforts have plummeted and why cases made by the agency’s field offices against pharmaceutical companies have languished, in some cases for years.
On Dec. 2, DEA officials held an off-the-record briefing for the senators. But the lawmakers said in the letter sent Wednesday that the session was not a “substitute for written responses to our questions.”
The senators said they wanted to know whether civil filings had fallen and if so, why. They also asked whether the Department of Justice played a role in policy changes that have affected the DEA’s enforcement efforts.
“Since we wrote to you, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released new data showing that the U.S. opioid epidemic is growing and that prescription and illicit opioids remain a driving force,” the senators wrote Wednesday. “Especially in light of this new data, Congress and the American people deserve an explanation of how the DEA is enforcing laws that could help address this public crisis.”
The letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and independent Bernie Sanders (Vt.).
“We do not yet know if the DEA is doing its job to prevent deadly prescription opioid painkillers from getting into the wrong hands as a result of decreased enforcement efforts against wholesale pharmaceutical distributors,” Markey said in a statement Wednesday.
Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a similar letter to Rosenberg and U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch after the Post stories. Wyden said Wednesday the response was insufficient.
“The DEA’s response to our inquiry was totally inadequate given the life-and-death nature of the opioid crisis,” he said.
Filed under: General Problems
Opiate pain medications have no problems getting into the wrong hands, it’s the right hands that the DEA has been preventing opiates from get into. Our problem is that chronic pain sufferers are not being considered to be the right hands. As we all know the CDC guidelines suggest that physicians do not prescribed opiates for chronic pain, but only prescribe for cancer or end of life treatment so this is what agency bureaucrats have these senators believing. So, if you’re addicted, have cancer or you are in your final hours, you have a voice in government. If you suffer immense and untollerable pain on a daily basis, you are ignored.
Bernie Sanders is tweeting several times a day about if the ACA is repealed that 18 million people would lose health insurance in the first year alone. Here is one of our attacking points. As Bernie tweets about ACA, we all need to reply about chronic pain and the abuses we are all going through as pain sufferers. Out of all 9 of these senators listed in the article, Bernie has the most followers and more people will see our tweets.
Next, the other 8 senators involved in prompting the DEA to use harsher enforcement will not accept emails or letters from people who aren’t their constituents, so we also need to connect with them in public forums like Twitter and even radio interviews that they all do. Places where it’s impossible for them to ignore what we are saying.
The thing that politicians hate the most is negitive press, and that’s exactly what the chronic pain community needs to create for them. Publicly post articles and story’s to their pages and Twitter accounts about pain sufferer mistreatments by doctors who are afraid to prescribe Opiates. Embarrass the shit out of them and just maybe they might start to listen to us.
Again i do not believe there is a opiate epidemic at all,,,I believe it was made up by 2 shrinks who have bamboozle our government ,w/their snake oil data..Tammy Baldwins is a piece of work here in wisco..U violate a gay person rites,,u get a front row seat in her office,,,,u kill a medically ill humanbeing by taking away his/her life saving medicines,,u get harrased or ignored,,,,or killed,,,,nice senatore eh!!!she obviously don’t give a dam about us here in wisco,,to the contrary,,she is 1 of the driving forcec against us,and our rite to proper medical care under the law,,maryw