WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — A congressional committee chairman investigating how drug companies dumped millions of painkillers into small-town pharmacies around the country said he’s facing resistance from within the executive branch.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said Friday at a GOP congressional retreat at The Greenbrier resort
that authorities like the Drug Enforcement Agency are not cooperating with his committee’s investigation.
“I’m very frustrated with the DEA, very frustrated with the Department of Justice,” he said. “I’ve threatened to issue subpoenas to get to the bottom of it. They’re cooperating more right now than they were prior to that threat. But we will not stop until we know what the heck is going on.”
The comments came in reference to reports from The Washington Post and CBS regarding the pharmaceutical industry’s influence in advancing favorable legislation in Congress and stifling lawsuits from the DEA.
A DOJ spokesman did not respond to an email and phone call regarding Walden’s remarks.
Walden is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating pill dumping into West Virginia. The committee recently sent a letter to drug wholesaler Miami-Luken, asking why the company didn’t flag shipments of nearly 21 million painkillers sent to Williamson, a town of 2,900 people, over 10 years.
The committee sent a similar letter to H.D. Smith regarding a “possible oversupply” of drugs into stores like Family Discount Pharmacy, in Mount Gay-Shamrock. Citing DEA data, the letter asked if the company internally investigated its disbursement of 1.1 million hydrocodone pills into the pharmacy, an 1,880 percent increase from the year prior, for a town of roughly 1,800 people.
Both letters cite an investigation from the Charleston Gazette-Mail regarding massive shipments of opioids into West Virginia and joint investigations between The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” on the pharmaceutical industry’s political influence.
In looking for a legislative fix to the substance abuse problem, Walden said he and other Congressmen have asked the DEA and the DOJ for guidance and have not been hearing back. He said he hopes the investigation prompts action to curb the flood of opioids infiltrating small towns.
“We have solicited information from the distributors; we are evaluating that information,” he said. “Suffice to say, when 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills come into West Virginia in six years, something is off the tracks, and people are dying as a result.”
Walden said, along with the investigation, the committee has been taking suggestions from its members for a piece of proposed legislation to handle the matter. The committee is scheduled to start drafting a bill in late February. He said there is also a possibility it would recommend criminal charges to the DOJ, if appropriate.
Though he hails a long way from Greenbrier County, Walden said the committee has taken a keen interest in West Virginia due the state’s legal history of prosecuting opioid wholesalers.
“Part of why West Virginia is a focus, by the way, is not only the damage we’ve seen, but also because the court cases and convictions that have occurred here open a window into what really happened here, which helps us go look at Ohio or Oregon or elsewhere,” he said.
In 2012, then-Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed lawsuits against more than a dozen drug wholesalers, including Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith. The lawsuit alleged that the companies’ shipments helped fuel the prescription drug problem in West Virginia. The distributors settled the lawsuits for a combined $44 million during the past two years, while admitting no wrongdoing.
Reps. Evan Jenkins, R-W.Va., and David McKinley, R-W.Va., joined Walden for the conference Friday.
Jenkins cited the letters, which named small towns across his home district. He said he will offer any help he can from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to help rein in the problem.
“One of the root causes is just the flood of the opioids, the oxycodones and the hydrocodones that flooded into the pharmacies,” he said. “There needs to be accountability. The wholesalers, the distributors, the manufacturers, the dispensers need to be held accountable. The numbers are stunning, and the numbers have to stop.”
McKinley, who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, spoke as well. He said a lot of the opioid crisis comes from a divide between rural America at large and Washington, D.C.
However, he said it’s important for the committee to keep finding facts and building a three-dimensional understanding of the issue, including its causes and its byproducts.
“We’ve got a plan. We’re following our lead; we’re following our process, as slow as, unfortunately, it may be sometimes. We follow the process. We’ll come out with a good result,” he said.
Mentioning the committee’s past success investigating corporate wrongdoing with Enron and others, Walden said the committee will get the job done, but it will take time.
“This is what we do,” he said. “But we do our investigation first. We get the facts, and then we make decisions, whether it goes to the Department of Justice or results in legislative change. But let there be no mistake about this: We are on this, and we will not stop until we get the facts.”
Filed under: General Problems
The DOJ is complicit, the DEA registered complaint about their hands being tied investigating these powerful corporations. Powerful industry lobbyists paid politicians to look the other way, while every method of data collection or accountability was attacked. The DOJ chose to prosecute low level offenders, people with addiction and mental health problems and the poor.
Industry insiders sit on the regulatory boards, ensuring that we wont get the truth. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rudy-giuliani-squashed-floridas-opioid-investigation Artilces like this get to the truth in the matter. How politically connected wealthy individuals stymied any regulatory, enforcement, or even data collection.
The pharma industry came up with the propaganda attacking people with pain, and blaming them for the so called opioid crisis.” It is all distraction, lies and propaganda, designed to protect the profiteers. American healthcare, is the most expensive and least effective in the developed world for a reason, it is profitable. This is nothing more than a long term marketing and propaganda campaign.
The alternatives are profitable too, driving desperate people in pain to alternatives, like implantable devices, alternative medicine and fly by night surgical centers. They turned addiction treatment into a profitable business too, even though most Americans did not have access. The media is complicit too, coining phrases, like “Hillbilly Heroin” or “Addicted Infants.” It was easier to sensationalize than to investigate the roots of the problem.
Check out the mass media coverage, they inject misinformation and lies, along with cherry picked facts. Almost every source of information, is biased against facts. It looks like they are now going after the Sacklers, a family that benefited, and started the initial attack disparaging people with pain. Not one of these factual articles, covers the Fact that health related advertising used to be highly regulated or illegal.
There was a reason that physicians were not supposed to endorse products. Now these same physicians and other health providers can make any spurious claim they get a financial reimbursement for. Look at how Opioids are a hot topic in content marketing. The loudest content marketers with the most followers are now getting federal funding to “research this topic. The best propagandists and marketers, and distorters of facts are in charge designing policy.
This is the logical outcome of Profit Driven Healthcare. Analyzing the underlying problems, is just not profitable. The people who worked in the Gig Economy, and did not really have any healthcare, when they worked 2 or 3 jobs, were never studied. Americans are still being Gas Lighted, they constantly run articles about wellness and lifestyle, in order to make people believe it won’t happen to them. Untreated chronic pain and addiction only happen to “those people” CMS did not track any of this, by design, even though we all pay for it.
People who did point out facts were silenced, and even physicians who see this every day were silenced or working under corporate gag orders. At every level of the healthcare industry, silence on certain topics is necessary, and fully enforced.
I found the part on “patient brokering” very interesting. And, explains alot for the push for the PDMPs being pushed by addiction guru, Kolodny…
There seems to be a very big scandle going on here, and has nothing to do with saving anyones life, but more about who can make the most money..
DISGUSTING!
https://energycommerce.house.gov/opioids/
This arguing us is insane….we need a VOICE. By we, I mean those of us dealing day to day with chronic intractable pain issues. I am one of the WE.
The GOVERNMENT has taken away the one useful tool needed to moderate this type of pain. THE GOVERNMENT HAS CROSSED THE LINE; INTERRUPTING MY PERSONAL HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT. This is a constitutional issue.
I want my healthcare provider to bet the entity prescribing me OPIATE ANALGESICS that will help me to MANAGE AND MODERATE MY DAILY CHRONIC PAIN ISSUES.
This is how it is to be. Period.
I would say this line right here, “He said a lot of the opioid crisis comes from a divide between rural America at large and Washington, D.C.”, sums up everything in many situations ✨
Why can’t anyone see that what these people are dying from is the use of illegal drugs like heroin and illicit fentanyl ANALOGS?