According to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, his December 2017 lawsuit was the cause behind Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ new directive for the DEA to change its regulation establishing how many opioid pills can be manufactured each year.
The announcement came just hours before a key deadline in Morrisey’s lawsuit, which sought greater transparency and broader input in the process the DEA uses to establish those limits.
He says evidence of diversion has been ignored for years in setting those limits, and he moved to suspend his lawsuit Thursday after getting the federal directive.
“The era of unlimited supply must end,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “We are losing too many neighbors, too many friends, too many sons and too many daughters to senseless death.
“The DEA’s quota system is fundamentally broken,” Morrisey said. “For far too long, it served the industry’s wants, instead of the patients’ needs, inexcusably neglecting evidence of diversion to rely on a formula that continues to kill hundreds each day. This must stop.”
Morrisey says the new process should require the DEA to formally seek input from the Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as every state.
He says that would be “a reversal from years of reckless oversight and abject failure.”
“I heartily applaud Attorney General Sessions for the major step he is taking and for his continued collaboration with our office to protect West Virginians from this deadly scourge of opioid excess,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “I am also appreciative of President Trump’s dedication to addressing the opioid problem, as it represents such a stark departure from the past.”
You can read Morrisey’s lawsuit here, Sessions’ directive here, and Morrisey’s motion to suspend the suit here.
legal opiate prescriptions in 2016 was less than 2006 and DEA cut opiate prescription manufacturing quotas in 2016.. again in 2017 and again in 2018… many opiates production quotas are abt 50% of what they were in 2015. .. and this numb-nuts attorney wants a larger cut… because the citizens of his state because of genetics, or socioeconomic reasons they have decided to abuse and/or be diverters of controlled substances.
Filed under: General Problems
I also wanted to thank Steve and Pain News Network for continued efforts to educate and Steve especially. As I stated above, I am done with pain groups. For those seeking moral support, they may be of assistance. I dont have any need to complain to others in pain. I do have a need to follow the current news. I also have a need to fight the government. i highly respect both sites for their continued efforts. We desperately need a call to change, protest and media coverage. We must organize or roll over and die. Bus in paid protestors if thats what it takes. Get arrested. Have a “Go Fund Me” ready with bail money. It is both shocking and appalling to continue to see pain patients continue to blame greedy doctors, to see the administrators for groups of thousands of members to advise others to take a letter from so or so touting the benefits of opiods and their doctors will prescribe what the patient used to be prescribed. It is actually scary that those affected are completely clueless.
The DEA has over stepped it’s authority and the very reason that they exist. Their purpose is/was illegal drugs and to go so far as diversion of legal controlled substances. They also have a responsibility to make sure that legal controlled substances are not denied to those in need as determined by a physician. The mission of the DEA is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the United States, or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets. How is it that they have been allowed to dictate to doctors how to treat their patients? How is it that the DEA has been allowed to over-ride a physician’s decisons to treat patients in a humane manner and mandate that said physician can no longer live up to the oath they took? How is it that they have been allowed to repeatedly raid and seize patient files from doctors who have done no wrong, as well as use threatening language towards doctors? How is it that they have been allowed to determine what is a proper doseage of opiods with no medical training or knowledge of diseases/conditions? How is it that the DEA has been allowed to burden pharmacists with detailed paperwork on every controlled substance dispensed and to use threatening language towards pharmacists, as well as give pharmacists the permissions to advise the DEA as to whether a patient may need or not need what has been prescribed? How is it that the DEA/FDA has been allowed to publish LIES in which statistics have been compiled through ever changing criteria, lumping heroin, illegal strains of Fentanyl that have neither been approved or used in any prescription, terminal patients with opiods in their system at the time of death, suicides due to being grossly un/undertreated, with the remainder being those who obtained presriptions by theft (or other means not avaialable for years via doctor shopping or pill mills) which were combined with other illegal drugs and/or alcohol that resulted in overdoses? How is it that the U.S. currently has the largest opiod crisis in history in which prescription pain meds account for less than 1% of the opiod crisis, with heroin accounting for approx. 80%, illegal strains of more often than not, illegal and deadly strains of Fentanyl approx. 20%, but this information is not readily available to the public? It has become purely political. Politicians want votes. The public has sucessfully been brainwashed. Just why was any of this allowed? Follow the money. Our prescription pain pills patents have all expired. Big pharma has very powerful lobbyists in Washington. There is no money in generics. Our corrupt politicians under the previous administration mandated large cuts in the manufacturing of these generic pills 3 times. Love him or hate him, Trump inherited this. He said that he did not understand our opiod epidemic and held 3 meetings to listen and learn. It is at this point that I stopped with any and all pain groups. All that attended were family and friends of overdose victims, none of who died from prescribed pain pills. Also in attendance was Christie who had a personal ax to grind. His friend died of a prescription pain pill overdose. That is true. His friend downed an entire bottle and chased it with a bottle of vodka, which he neglected to say. We had every opportunity at this time to be out enmass protesting and speaking. We did nothing. I include myself. I am physically unable, because it is illegal to prescribe what is the accepted medical protocol for my incurable disease. All of us could contribute in one way or another. in my case, I could make signs for protestors with photos of known suicides and the condition they suffered from and finally gave up. For 5 years, I have signed every last petition that likely ended up in the nearest trash can. i have sent emails, made phone calls. No more. To continue this route is the difinition of insanity. Nothing of importance has ever changed in this country by politely signing petitions or our boldest action, asking permission for 20 “white coats” to hold protest signs. I am surprised that I am not yet dead due to an inevetible blood clot, stroke or heart attack from being immobile for so long. Initially it was “guidlines for primary care phycicians”, enforced as law by the DEA to all doctors. It is now law with NO EXCEPTIONS unless in a hospital, hospice or nursing home. This is the final chapter of my life? No good reason, other than the government has decided my fate? Am I a “drug seeker”? Absolutely. I am a drug seeker in the same way that I would be a Pepto Bismol seeker if I had an upset stomache and refuse to see it as a negative term, pretending I dont want opiods. Opiods no specialist woul have denied in the past, but are not allowed to dispense any longer at a strength I need to do anything more than sit upright in ned, Opiods work. With the proper doseage, my disease had a 10% suicide rate. I think it likely it will or is close to 90%. I am angry and also depressed that it has come to this because we allowed it to happen and still do nothing. If I were an animal, my owner would be arrested. My life has been stolen away from me. Each and everyday on the news I see protestors getting media coverage for every real or perceived injustice. This is life or death for many of us. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
This man is either willfully ignorant or completely brain dead, how is this going to help any patients? Get rid of all the so called experts and disband the agencies mentioned they are all colluding with each other! Man this snowball is really getting faster and bigger the farther down the hill it rolls…