Gottlieb: Next Steps in Opioid Crisis May be ‘Uncomfortable’

http://www.raps.org/Regulatory-Focus/News/2017/10/25/28752/Gottlieb-Next-Steps-in-Opioid-Crisis-May-be-Uncomfortable/

In testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wednesday, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that the next steps in efforts to combat the ongoing opioid crisis will be difficult, but necessary given the spread of the epidemic.

“We’ll need to touch clinical practice in ways that may make some parties uncomfortable,” Gottlieb said, pointing to restrictions on prescribing and mandatory education for physicians as possible steps.

“Long ago we ran out of straightforward options,” he added.

Gottlieb’s remarks come as the US continues to struggle with overdoses that claimed the lives of at least 64,000 people in 2016, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Gottlieb also said the agency will be taking another look at the benefit-risk framework for opioids in light of the ongoing epidemic to inform its regulatory decisions, “including recommending that products be withdrawn from the market.”

In July, Endo Pharmaceuticals voluntarily withdrew its reformulated Opana ER (oxymorphone hydrochloride) from the market less than a month after FDA requested that the company pull the drug due to public health concerns over abuse.

Medication-Assisted Treatments

Gottlieb announced several steps FDA will take to promote the development and use of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid addiction.

The agency is also working to draft guidance to promote the development and use of non-abstinence-based endpoints for addiction treatments and support the development of drugs that address symptoms of addiction, such as cravings.

And Gottlieb said that FDA will do more to promote the use of existing addiction treatments such as naltrexone, buprenorphine and methadone.

“One concept that FDA is actively pursuing is the research necessary to support a label indication for medication-assisted treatment for everyone who presents with an overdose, based on data showing a reduction in death at the broader population-level,” he said, adding that the agency is also considering updating the labeling for such drugs to reflect that they may need to be taken for long periods of time.

Lastly, Gottlieb said that FDA will take steps to address the stigma associated with MATs.

“The stigma reflects a view some have that a patient is still suffering from addiction even when they’re in full recovery, just because they require medication to treat their illness,” Gottlieb said.

Access and Affordability

During his testimony, Gottlieb said that inadequate insurance coverage is part of the reason some people with opioid addictions do not receive necessary treatment.

Gottlieb also raised the point that currently the vast majority of opioids dispensed in the US are inexpensive, immediate release formulations. Going forward, Gottlieb said that insurance coverage and reimbursement could be an issue for new abuse-deterrent or non-addictive pain treatments.

“It will be the case that some of those newer drugs will be more expensive than the older formulations, and I think we need to think about how we provide incentives for those to be used—perhaps preferentially—if we think the public health outcome is going to be better,” he said.

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Pharmacist acquitted of murder in 2012 meningitis outbreak

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/10/25/pharmacist-acquitted-murder-in-2012-meningitis-outbreak.html

A pharmacist at a facility whose tainted drugs sparked a nationwide meningitis outbreak that killed 76 people was cleared Wednesday of murder but was convicted of mail fraud and racketeering.

Jurors said prosecutors failed to prove Glenn Chin was responsible for the deaths of people who were injected with mold-contaminated drugs produced by the now-closed New England Compounding Center in Framingham, just west of Boston. As the supervisory pharmacist, Chin oversaw the so-called clean rooms where the drugs were made.

Chin’s attorney said he saw the verdict as a victory. He said prosecutors overreached by charging Chin with second-degree murder acts under federal racketeering law.

“This was never, ever, ever — no matter what these prosecutors tell you — this was never a murder case,” Chin’s attorney Stephen Weymouth said after the verdict was read at Boston’s federal courthouse.

“It was his hand, no doubt, that mixed that medicine that killed mom,” the North Carolina man said.

Prosecutors said Chin instructed his staff to use expired ingredients, failed to properly sterilize the drugs and ignored findings of mold and other bacteria in the rooms.

Chin’s attorneys argued he can’t be blamed for the deaths because there’s no evidence he caused the drugs to become contaminated. The attorneys blamed the pharmacy’s co-founder Barry Cadden, who they said treated employees poorly and ordered them to cut corners to increase production and profits.

Jurors acquitted Cadden of second-degree murder under the federal racketeering law but found him guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Cadden tearfully apologized to the victims in June before he was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Chin was charged with the deaths of 25 people in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. He would have faced up to life in prison had he been convicted of the murders. He is set to be sentenced in January.

Experts and even Chin’s attorney had said before the trial that they believed prosecutors had a stronger case against Chin than they had against Cadden because Chin was the one mixing the drugs in the clean rooms.

The outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections was blamed on contaminated injections of medical steroids, given mostly to people with back pain.

More than 700 people in 20 states were sickened in what’s considered the worst public health crisis in recent U.S. history. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the death toll at 64 in 2013. Federal officials identified additional victims in their investigation, raising the number of deaths to 76.

“Mr. Chin ran NECC’s clean room operations with depraved disregard for human lives,” Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said in a news release Wednesday. “As a licensed pharmacist, Chin took an oath to protect patients, but instead deliberately violated safety regulations.”

FBI special agent in charge Harold Shaw said Chin “gambled with patients’ lives” by cutting corners and ignoring the warning signs that his production methods were unsafe.

“Hundreds of patients were unnecessarily harmed from his reckless disregard for health and safety regulations,” Shaw said.

The outbreak sparked calls for increased regulation of compounding pharmacies, which differ from ordinary drugstores in that they custom-mix medications and supply them directly to hospitals and doctors. Congress in 2013 passed a bill giving federal officials more oversight of the pharmacies.

Pharmacist Chin was the Pharmacist in Charge and/or Responsible Pharmacist… that means that he was legally responsible to the board of pharmacy for the legal operation of the pharmacy.

This shows the difference between how the legal system deals with a healthcare professional is “involved” in the death of a pt and how the DEA deals with a prescriber that has one or more pts that OD.

NECC and Pharmacist Chin was responsible for 76 DEATHS… where as a prescriber can only be accused of having a handful of pts OD.. and the prescriber’s practice is raided, shut down and typically the DEA confiscates all the assets of the prescriber and the prescriber is charged with the pt’s death and normally jailed.

Seems like not just a DOUBLE STANDARD but a very wide gap between the two standards ?

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The opioid crackdown is making life untenable for chronic pain patients like me

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-sanders-opioid-crisis-national-emergency-20171025-story.html

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Cancer patient dies after multiple errors during chemotherapy treatment, report claims

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/10/25/cancer-patient-dies-after-multiple-errors-during-chemotherapy-treatment-report-claims.html

Health investigators in Minnesota are questioning at least one nurse at an assisted living facility after a deceased patient who was scheduled to receive 42 doses of chemotherapy medications in a 12-week period only got 26. The patient, who was not identified, had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and was put on a strict schedule of treatments both at the Legacy of St. Michael and at home, Fox 9 reported.

A Department of Health report revealed multiple errors in the patient’s treatment, including delays in putting information regarding administering the medication and dosage data into a computer system. The nurse at the focus of questioning reportedly told investigators that she “shadowed a staff nurse for two days before she was on her own,” but could not provide any training documents or a background check, Fox 9 reported.

A facility spokesman has refuted the department’s findings about the nurse.

“We respectfully disagree with some of the Department of Health’s findings in this matter and have filed an appeal with documented facts to the department, including documentation that the nurse identified as not having a current license in fact did have a current license, was trained to administer medications, had a completed background study and was tested for tuberculosis,” the spokesman told Fox 9.

The patient’s treatment was scheduled to start in September and continue through April, though lab work showed that the cancer had progressed with one provider saying “the chemotherapy never had a chance to work.”

A relative told Fox 9 that they were notified of one instance in which a dose was missed. No criminal charges have been filed, Fox 9 reported. 

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Catch 22 — Denied Pain Relief and No Way Out

www.nationalpainreport.com/catch-22-denied-pain-relief-and-no-way-out-8834665.html

“Catch 22” is a phrase that most of us recognize. It refers to a satirical novel by Joseph Heller (and later a chilling movie) about flight crews operating from North Africa during World War II.  Casualty rates were so high among these fliers that some of them considered trying to be eliminated from duty on grounds of insanity.  But one of a long list of “catches” standing in their way was the idea that if you were sane enough to recognize the insanity of the war you were flying into, then you were sane enough to fly into it — even if you didn’t come home.

Pain patients can find themselves in the very center such dilemmas.

My most recent experience of Catch 22 began with a really good article in the November 2017 issue of Scientific American, by Dr Carl L. Hart, Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. “People Are Dying Because of Ignorance, Not Because of Opioids”  [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-are-dying-because-of-ignorance-not-because-of-opioids/]  In this article, Dr Hart utterly demolishes the nonsense surrounding President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in response to the widely hyped “opioid epidemic”.   He demonstrates that addiction in America is neither a new condition nor a real epidemic. As he writes,

“The vast majority of opioid users do not become addicts. Users’ chances of becoming addicted increase if they are white, male, young and unemployed and if they have co-occurring psychiatric disorders. That is why it is critical to conduct a thorough assessment of patients entering treatment, paying particular attention to these factors rather than simply focusing on the unrealistic goal of eliminating opioids.

I found Dr Hart’s paper to be profoundly on target.  So I looked him up online to send a note of appreciation (Scientific America doesn’t invite comments by non-subscribers).  I congratulated him on a well reasoned and supported narrative.  I also suggested that he might lend his voice to forcing the US Centers for Disease Control to retract and rewrite their enormously destructive and ill-founded opioid prescription guidelines of 2016.

A Canadian friend of mine independently decided to add her voice in a similar comment to Dr. Hart.  I won’t name her here, for reasons that will shortly become obvious.  I describe her circumstances below, with her permission.

My friend is a chronic pain patient who recently learned that her doctor of nearly ten years is leaving the practice of pain management years earlier than he’d intended, saying he was “ANGRY” and had “had enough”.  Enough hounding by regulators, she has to assume he means.  She’s now paralyzed with fear. Canadians are being deserted and abused in much the same manner as Americans, because of their version of our CDC prescription guidelines.  In Canada, enforcement of restrictive policy is managed by medical colleges rather than by Health Canada, but the result is the same:  patients are being coerced to taper off pain medication they may have been on for decades, or outright discharged without medical support.

My friend has tried every pain management doctor nearby, as well as every family practitioner. (Most family doctors will no longer prescribe narcotics in any case; and other pain specialists are closing shop too.  In the last two or three years, half the pain practices in her province have closed.)  She’s also looked right across Canada; but no one will take her as a patient.  She’s even looked in the U.S., where she has friends who are alarmed for her, and as far away as Europe.  She has a lot of company among other frightened, desperate, and abandoned patients in her home town, and across Canada. Pain clinics are now flooded with new referrals, and most won’t consider patients who “simply” need their prescriptions renewed.  Typical wait times to be seen at a Canadian pain clinic are at least two years and in most cases far longer.

Because she’s a thoughtful individual, my friend and her husband have discussed their situation and prospects in detail.  She has a plan for ending her own life, rather than allowing agonizing pain to overtake and disable her completely.  She is not “suicidal” in the usual sense that most doctors use the word.  Her decision is rational, proportionate, and made necessary by the refusal of Canadian medical colleges to allow doctors to treat her.  In essence, the colleges have chosen to make themselves agents of torture for hundreds of thousands of people whose only crime is that they hurt.  The college in her province is one of the worst offenders.

Adding to the credibility and poignancy of my friend’s comments, she briefly described her situation to Dr. Hart in her letter.  And here’s where the Catch 22 came in.

An hour after she hit the “send” key, there was a thunderous knock at her front door.  When it was opened, she was greeted by two uniformed police officers who informed her that they were there to conduct a “wellness” visit.  Dr. Hart’s office administrator had contacted police concerning a potential suicide victim who might be “insane” (a word used by the officers).  In another hour of interview, they learned quite the contrary and went away shaking their heads. Her story is quite well known by friends and even by Canadian national media.  She is by no stretch of imagination anything less than clear-headed and utterly sane.  She is instead being persecuted and tortured by her own government—to which her college (like all the others) is accountable.

We cannot blame Dr Hart’s staff for doing anything wrong.  They didn’t.  Under US law, the doctor could be prosecuted for facilitating suicide and barred from professional practice as a psychologist, if his administrator had done anything less.  This is the law in both countries.  And it is yet another “Catch 22”.  Our government is willing to unleash the DEA to drive pain management doctors out of practice by the dozen.  But they’re not willing to wake up and smell the coffee on addiction and chronic pain, as ably portrayed by Dr Hart and many others.

The war on drugs and addiction is bogus and dangerous.  It is a phony war directed to the wrong causes and punishing the wrong people.  It punishes millions of people who use opioids responsibly for pain management, while avoiding the real needs — which are  intensive education against drug use in kids as early as Middle School, and community re-integration programs to provide present addicts with safe housing, employment training, Methadone or Suboxone maintenance, and extended access to regular counseling for both addiction and mental health issues.

While I am not a advocate of a pts committing suicide, but SEVEN STATE have laws that permits terminal pts to LEGALLY COMMIT SUICIDE (death with dignity)  and THIRTY STATE with such bills on their legislative agenda this year.  https://www.deathwithdignity.org/take-action/

There have been “stories” out there of insurance companies denying certain costly therapies, but offering to pay the cost of “death with dignity” in those six states where it is legal, and we have the potential for where 70% +/- of the states will have such laws in the near future.

Most states have laws where friends, relatives, neighbors can call authorities about a person they believe they are going to harm themselves or others and they can be involuntarily institutionalized for a 72 hour evaluation.. in CALF it is referred as 5150, in FL it is Baker Act.

The question has to be asked if a prescriber has to report someone who is at risk of suicide or potentially suffer professional sanctioning… Would that same prescriber suffer any consequences if one of the pts committed suicide and they leave behind a audio/video that directly blames the prescriber for denial of care – cutting back/stopping opiates/pain management ?

Would the same apply to Pharmacists, insurance companies, PBM’s for refusal to fill or pay for what had otherwise been covered/provided services ?

We hear almost daily of  the financial problems various entities have from cities, counties, states and the federal government and we know that we have a huge growth in the senior population thanks to the 80 odd million baby boomers.. the oldest is now 71 and the youngest is 53 and 10,000 are turning 65 EVERY DAY and eligible for Medicare.  Right now it is projected as the oldest baby boomer reaches their expected life expectancy, Medicare will go into a negative cash flow and Medicare disability will enter that mode much sooner.

It is no secret that the elderly, disabled, handicapped are costly to our healthcare system.  Is the opiate crisis and the war on drugs being used as a means to “cull the herd” ?  Remove the “takers”… so that it will not cost the “makers” as much ?

One of the authors of Obamacare – Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel – has suggested that our society would be better off if we just “stop living at 75” .

You stop contributing to society at 75 ?

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Ads That Can Kill: Lawyers Scare Patients Out Of Taking Medication, Legal Reform Group Says

https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2017/10/25/ads-that-can-kill-lawyers-scare-patients-out-of-taking-medication-legal-reform-group-says/#1ed130162ae4

A new paper says lawyer advertising is scaring patients into not taking their medications, leading to dozens of serious incidents – including six deaths from individuals who stopped using their blood-thinner.

The paper, released by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform as part of its annual Legal Reform Summit, says television viewers were blitzed with 1.2 million such ads in 2016 by mass tort lawyers who should approach $1 billion in spending this year. The ILR owns Legal Newsline.

“There is mounting evidence that misleading information and exaggerated claims made in lawsuit ads prevent people from seeking treatment or lead them to stop taking a prescribed medication without consulting a doctor,” says the paper, prepared by Cary Silverman of Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

Projections for 2017 have lawyer advertising surpassing previous years. Nearly a half-million ads over prescription drugs and medical devices are expected, and asbestos ads should approach 200,000, the paper says.

A small group of law firms and marketing companies were responsible for half of the spending in 2016, according to statistics provided by X-Ante. They are the Pulaski Law Firm, Relion Group, Knightline Legal, Davis & Crump and Gold Shield Group.

“Even when scientific evidence suggests that some patients may experience side effects of complications from a drug or medical device, lawsuit ads do not discuss the actual level of risk,” the paper says.

“Without such information, viewers cannot compare the potentially life-saving or significantly life-improving benefits that the medication or device offers to what may be relatively infinitesimal risks.”

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Thanks for seeking justice

Today the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C. ruled the Trump administration must allow “Jane Doe” – a 17-year-old immigrant woman – to obtain a legal abortion.

The court’s ruling respects Jane Doe’s decision and her dignity. Now it’s time for Trump administration officials to stop forcing this young woman – and others like her – to stay pregnant when they don’t want to be.

We’ll deliver your petition signatures to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to demand they stop breaking the law by denying immigrant women safe access to abortion care. Can you add your name to join us right now?

Sign our petition right now to tell the Trump administration that it’s unconstitutional and unconscionable to force immigrant women to carry their pregnancies to term.

The fight isn’t over. The Trump administration has shown it will do everything it can to block Jane from making this decision on her own. And, unfortunately, this no-abortion policy applies to all young women in immigration custody. But the ACLU will continue to fight for justice for all Janes. You can go on this page here to get advice on abortion and get more info.

Read more details on the case and the ACLU’s involvement in defending “Jane Doe” and suing Scott Lloyd – Trump’s Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement – below.

Any threat to reproductive rights in this country is a threat to all of our rights.

Thanks for all you do,

Louise Melling
Deputy Legal Director

The Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement – and its anti-choice director, Scott Lloyd – is illegally and outrageously blocking a 17-year-old woman, “Jane Doe,” from obtaining an abortion she desires and has the right to acquire.

Make your voice heard – tell the federal government we want justice for Jane and all immigrant youth in government custody.

We took the government to court this week, and the judge agreed with us – quickly and decisively – and ordered the government to allow Jane to have her abortion. But then the Trump administration appealed. And now, a court has delayed Jane’s access to care even longer, pushing her even further into a pregnancy she decided to end weeks ago.

This fight is far from over. The only way we’re going to get Lloyd and the Trump administration to stop denying these young people their basic human rights is to expose their illegal actions.

Tell Scott Lloyd and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to stop breaking the law and stop denying immigrant women their constitutional right to safe abortion care.

It’s illegal to force a young woman to carry her pregnancy to term against her will. Period.

Not only did government officials block Jane from her healthcare appointments for a safe abortion, they forced her to go to a religiously-affiliated “crisis pregnancy center” where she received coercive counseling and an invasive, unnecessary ultrasound performed on her by non-medical staff against her will.

Jane Doe’s story is far from an isolated incident.

In another case, a young woman was forcibly sent to an emergency room after she’d taken an abortion pill to try to prevent her from completing her abortion. In yet another case, a senior U.S. government official was personally sent to visit a young woman who was seeking an abortion to attempt to talk her out of her decision.

And those are just some of the cases we know.

Government officials don’t have free reign to force their ideology and religious views onto undocumented youth. But this will only stop if we shine light on and stand up to illegal actions, in the courtroom and on the streets.

Tell Director Lloyd and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to stop illegally blocking safe abortion care for young immigrant women.

Thanks for seeking justice,

Louise Melling
Deputy Legal Director

MISSION STATEMENT OF ACLU:

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This is fentanyl: A visual guide

For example, the chemical difference between fentanyl and carfentanil is just a few molecules. But the difference in potency is significant: Fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine, but carfentanil is up to 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. Carfentanil is used as a tranquilizer for large animals like elephants and has been blamed in fatal drug overdose outbreaks in Ohio and West Virginia.

Illicit drug makers change compositions so that if they are caught with the drug, they technically have a different chemical compound from fentanyl or some other already regulated compound. The idea is to get around the law. So the Drug Enforcement Administration is constantly adding new variations to its list of controlled substances. It’s a cat and mouse game.

Deadly dose

Why add these fentanyl variations into the mix? Because they are so potent that it just a little bit can be cut and mixed into other drugs such as heroin or pills, stretching out the supply.

Consider that you can buy about a kilogram of black-market fentanyl or a derivative online for about $8,000. That can be used to cut 1 million pills, and on the street, those pills can bring in a total of $20 million to $30 million.

But that potency can also be very deadly. An amount you can’t even see can kill you. There’s also no real quality control over the final drug. One batch may have the fentanyl evenly distributed throughout, while another may have some pills with much higher concentrations of fentanyl than others.

Made in China

According to US law enforcement, most illicit fentanyl is coming from China, where weak regulations and poor monitoring have created an environment ripe for underground labs to thrive. Illegal fentanyl and the chemicals to make it can be easily bought on the internet. Most are shipped into Mexico, where they are further processed before they are smuggled over the border. Sometimes, these drugs are shipped directly into the US.

It’s a major challenge for US Customs and Border Protection agents. In fact, according to the agency, it has had to change its drug testing protocols to prevent accidental overdose from inhalation or absorption through the skin. Of the 328 air, land and sea entry points into the US that the

agency oversees, at least 15 locations, including some along the US-Mexico border, now have naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote, in case of accidental overdose. However, not all offices are equipped with the field testing equipment needed to determine whether agents are actually handling fentanyl.

Special delivery

But there’s another route that drug smugglers have also found to be effective: the US Postal Service. Some drug dealers are even buying from China directly into the United States. Considering that the Postal Service handles about 154 billion pieces of mail every year, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. Working with Customs and Border Protection, the Postal Service uses a range of tools, such as dogs, X-rays and an their intrinsic ability to spot something that just seems out of the ordinary.

Law enforcement officials say that at the moment, the government can’t effectively identify which packages to inspect because so little tracking information accompanies international mail bound for the United States.

Packages sent via private couriers such UPS and FedEx come with information such as who sent them, transit stops the package made and who it is b

ound for, but only about half of all packages that come into the US carry that information. Bills currently in Congress aim to increase oversight of international packaging to help track their origins.

For example, the chemical difference between fentanyl and carfentanil is just a few molecules. But the difference in potency is significant: Fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine, but carfentanil is up to 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. Carfentanil is used as a tranquilizer for large animals like elephants and has been blamed in fatal drug overdose outbreaks in Ohio and West Virginia.

Illicit drug makers change compositions so that if they are caught with the drug, they technically have a different chemical compound from fentanyl or some other already regulated compound. The idea is to get around the law. So the Drug Enforcement Administration is constantly adding new variations to its list of controlled substances. It’s a cat and mouse game.

Deadly dose

Why add these fentanyl variations into the mix? Because they are so potent that it just a little bit can be cut and mixed into other drugs such as heroin or pills, stretching out the supply.

Consider that you can buy about a kilogram of black-market fentanyl or a derivative online for about $8,000. That can be used to cut 1 million pills, and on the street, those pills can bring in a total of $20 million to $30 million.

But that potency can also be very deadly. An amount you can’t even see can kill you. There’s also no real quality control over the final drug. One batch may have the fentanyl evenly distributed throughout, while another may have some pills with much higher concentrations of fentanyl than others.

Made in China

According to US law enforcement, most illicit fentanyl is coming from China, where weak regulations and poor monitoring have created an environment ripe for underground labs to thrive. Illegal fentanyl and the chemicals to make it can be easily bought on the internet. Most are shipped into Mexico, where they are further processed before they are smuggled over the border. Sometimes, these drugs are shipped directly into the US.

It’s a major challenge for US Customs and Border Protection agents. In fact, according to the agency, it has had to change its drug testing protocols to prevent accidental overdose from inhalation or absorption through the skin. Of the 328 air, land and sea entry points into the US that the agency oversees, at least 15 locations, including some along the US-Mexico border, now have naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote, in case of accidental overdose. However, not all offices are equipped with the field testing equipment needed to determine whether agents are actually handling fentanyl.

Special delivery

But there’s another route that drug smugglers have also found to be effective: the US Postal Service. Some drug dealers are even buying from China directly into the United States. Considering that the Postal Service handles about 154 billion pieces of mail every year, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. Working with Customs and Border Protection, the Postal Service uses a range of tools, such as dogs, X-rays and an their intrinsic ability to spot something that just seems out of the ordinary.

Law enforcement officials say that at the moment, the government can’t effectively identify which packages to inspect because so little tracking information accompanies international mail bound for the United States.

Packages sent via private couriers such UPS and FedEx come with information such as who sent them, transit stops the package made and who it is bound for, but only about half of all packages that come into the US carry that information. Bills currently in Congress aim to increase oversight of international packaging to help track their origins.

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Secret Video Released Showing DEA Agents Execute 2 Women, a Child, and a Man

After keeping a video secret for five years, the world is now finally seeing how the DEA can kill innocent people and get away with it.

www.thefreethoughtproject.com/dea-agents-execute-2-women-child-man/

In the federal government’s relentless and futile pursuit to control what Americans can and cannot put into their own bodies, all too often, innocent people become the victims of state-sponsored violence. Since its inception during the Nixon years, the drug war has not only failed at its task but it’s served to create a massive opioid epidemic and eviscerated rights—all while fostering corruption and violence within the government. At the head of this violent and corrupt beast is the government office known as the Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA.

A scathing new report out of ProPublica has just shined some light on the DEA’s dark and violent history. This new evidence, accompanied with a video, shows that for the past five years, the DEA has been lying about an incident that resulted in them killing four innocent civilians, including two women and a child.

The incident happened in Honduras during an operation carried out under the cover of darkness in one of many futile attempts to stop people from selling arbitrary substances.

According to the report from ProPublica:

In the DEA’s view, the dead — one man, two women and a 14-year-old boy — were among those on a boat that shot at a canoe carrying a joint DEA-Honduran anti-drug team. The DEA said it had evidence in the form of night-vision video taken from a surveillance plane showing an “exchange of gunfire” between the two vessels after the larger boat collided with the canoe carrying the agents.

 

Now, for the first time, the three-hour video has been released to the public. It strongly suggests that the DEA’s account of crossfire in the May 2012 mission was not accurate. The release of the video, under a Freedom of Information Act request, follows a scathing report published by the inspectors general of the Departments of Justice and State earlier this year that challenged the DEA’s version of events.

ProPublica, along with the NY Times hired a forensic expert to analyze said video. According to the expert, Bruce Koenig, the video shows numerous flashes originating from the DEA and not the family who was murdered.

Mr. Koenig, who formerly was the supervisor of the F.B.I.’s forensic audio/video group, examined the video frame by frame and concluded that only one flash originates from the passenger boat, according to the report. However, it was determined that this single flash could’ve been caused by a gunshot to the motor of the victim’s boat. Indeed, experts later found a bullet hole in the motor.

Just prior to the release of this video—in a likely attempt to quell backlash beforehand—the DEA disbanded the agency’s program that carried out this attack in Honduras. The operation was named the Foreign-Deployed Advisory Support Teams, or FAST, and it provided military-style training to law enforcement officers in other countries to counter drug traffickers.

According to ProPublica, the inspectors general report, which found no evidence to support the DEA’s account that its agents were fired upon, has also drawn attention from lawmakers. A bipartisan group of four senators asserted that the DEA and State Department “repeatedly and knowingly misled members of Congress and congressional staff.”

“The DEA convinced themselves of a false version of events due to arrogance, false assumptions, and ignorance,” said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy and one of the staff members who has spent years delving into the shooting. “They rushed to judgment and then stuck to their story.”

For over five years, the DEA kept this video secret despite claiming that it exonerated the officers in the killing of the man, two women, and one child. Peter Quilter, a former staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who attended some of the initial briefings explained the DEA’s deception from the beginning. “It was very difficult to second-guess them,” he said, adding, “They very simply misled the Congress. The video did not back up their story of what happened.”

ProPublica detailed the events of the video which sounds like a scene straight out of Hollywood.

In the video, the cocaine-filled pickup truck can be seen driving through the village to a landing on the twisting Patuca River. There the traffickers offload the drugs into a motorized canoe.

 

Four government helicopters appear and chaos erupts. The traffickers quickly abandon their task. One of them pushes the drug-laden canoe into the middle of the river and flees into the jungle with the others. Three members of the anti-drug team — two Honduran police and one DEA agent — ignore the men and pursue the canoe downstream.

 

The three men manage to climb on board. The DEA agent, sitting in the back, begins to pilot it back toward the landing. But the motor stalls and the canoe starts to drift downstream. The DEA agent can be seen vainly jerking the starter rope to try to restart the engine.

 

As he does this a second boat appears in the frame. It seems to be maneuvering directly toward the drifting canoe carrying the drugs. This second boat would turn out to be a water taxi, carrying a dozen passengers and cargo upriver to Ahuas.

 

The passengers and pilot on the civilian boat would later say they were terrified by the helicopters and did not intend to steer toward the canoe containing the law enforcement agents. For their part, the drug agents assumed the second boat was trying to recover the drugs.

 

It remains unclear why the civilian craft steered directly into the boat with the agents, but the boats collided.

 

The video clearly shows gunfire from the anti-drug agents. As passengers leap into the water, the anti-drug team continues to fire at them. An eight-second burst of machine gun fire comes from one of the helicopters. (The inspectors general report said a DEA agent ordered a Honduran door gunner to fire.)

 

The footage cuts away for a moment, and the edges of the video are blocked by DEA redactions, obscuring the surveillance plane’s altitude and other technical intelligence-gathering data the agency deemed sensitive.

The DEA was unable to show that anyone in the boat had been armed as no bullets struck the agents, the helicopters, or their canoe. In total, three people were injured and four were killed.

Below is a video illustrating how the government can quite literally get away with murder and justify it by claiming to keep you safe from substances they deem illegal.

ProPublica reached out to one of the victims of the shooting who still has no idea why the DEA shot at them. Hilda Lezama, who operated the boat with her husband says she is no longer able to work as both of her legs suffered debilitating bullet wounds. “I can’t afford to support my daughters,” she said. “We still don’t know why this happened.”

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