prosecutors will help addiction-ravaged cities

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ag-sessions-address-opioid-epidemic-hard-hit-ohio-48980919

Sessions:

The Justice Department will dispatch 12 federal prosecutors to cities ravaged by addiction who will focus exclusively on investigating health care fraud and opioid scams that are fueling the nation’s drug abuse epidemic, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday.

He unveiled the pilot program during a speech in hard-hit Ohio, where eight people a day die of accidental overdoses.

“In recent years some of the government officials in our country I think have mistakenly sent mixed messages about the harmfulness of drugs,” Sessions said. “So let me say: We cannot capitulate intellectually or morally unto this kind of rampant drug abuse. We must create a culture that’s hostile to drug abuse.”

Sessions said the group of prosecutors he has dubbed the “opioid fraud and abuse detection unit” will rely on data in their efforts to root out pill mills and track down doctors and other health care providers who illegally prescribe or distribute narcotics such as fentanyl and other powerful painkillers.

Such prescription opioids are behind the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history. More than 52,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2015 — a record — and experts believe the numbers have continued to rise. Sessions has made aggressive prosecutions of drug crime a top priority, saying the deadly overdoses necessitate a return to tougher tactics.

The Health Department says opioid-related overdoses killed 3,050 Ohioans in 2015, with that number expected to jump sharply for 2016.

In June, the coroner serving the greater Columbus area said overdose deaths through April of this year rose to 173, a 66 percent jump from the same period a year ago.

The prosecutors will be based in U.S. attorney’s offices in the Middle District of Florida; the Eastern District of Michigan; the Northern District of Alabama; the Eastern District of Tennessee; Nevada; the Eastern District of Kentucky; Maryland; the Western District of Pennsylvania; the Southern District of Ohio; the Eastern District of California; the Middle District of North Carolina; and the Southern District of West Virginia.

In May, Sessions instructed the nation’s federal prosecutors to bring the toughest charges possible against most crime suspects. Critics assailed the move as a return to failed drug-war policies that unduly affected minorities and filled prisons with nonviolent offenders.

The announcement was a reversal of Obama-era policies that is sure to send more people to prison and for much longer terms.

Advocates warned the shift would crowd federal prisons and strain Justice Department resources. Some involved in criminal justice during the drug war feared the human impact would look similar.

Sessions said. “So let me say: We cannot capitulate intellectually or morally unto this kind of rampant drug abuse

I question what Session knows about INTELLIGENCE AND MORALITY…  The DEA has cut the Pharma’s production quota on opiates… legal opiate prescriptions are down and opiate OD deaths are UP..  and they keep quoting higher and higher drug OD deaths…  INTELLIGENCE would suggest that the legal opiate prescriptions are NOT THE CAUSE..

Besides it would appear that SESSION does not believe in personal responsibility… apparently our judicial system has put themselves in charge of the country’s morality.

Have you noticed that recently they have added the charges of Medicare/Medicaid/Insurance fraud and money laundering and when they make announcement about “busting” a prescriber/providers they lists all the ASSETS that they were able to seize.  Seizing illegal substances costs the DEA money… they have to inventory, store and destroy… it is a NET-NET-NET LOSS for the DEA to go after the CARTELS.   Where is the INTELLIGENCE within the DOJ/DEA as to the real underlying causes of all of these OD’s ?

This move by SESSION and recent moves by Chris CHRISTIE is just to funnel more MONEY into the war on drugs … as if the 81 billion/yr that we are already spending and > ONE TRILLION we have spent since the Control Substance Act 1970 was signed into law is not enough..  and Congress was already discussing adding 4.5 billion/yr. 

Notice that both Session & Christie are ATTORNEYS and they are proposing more MONEY being funneled into the JUDICIAL SYSTEM… the FRATERNITY that they are part of !  Could this be consider a form of SELF SERVING ?

 

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