Inside the drug industry's plan to disarm the DEA
Source: Washington Post
THE OPIOID FILES
INSIDE THE DRUG INDUSTRY’S PLAN TO DEFEAT THE DEA
Faced with pressure to curtail suspicious opioid shipments, an alliance fought back with every weapon at its disposal
By Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz, Steven Rich and Meryl Kornfield Sept. 13, 2019
Newly unsealed documents in a landmark civil case in Cleveland provide clues to one of the most enduring mysteries of the opioid epidemic: How were drug companies able to weaken the federal government's most powerful enforcement weapon at the height of the crisis?
The industry enlisted members of Congress to limit the powers of the Drug Enforcement Administration. It devised “tactics” to push back against the agency. And it commissioned a “Crisis Playbook” to burnish its image and blame the federal government for not doing enough to stop the epidemic.
The new information is emerging through the efforts of lawyers in the massive federal lawsuit against two dozen drug companies in Cleveland who have obtained depositions from high-ranking company officials, internal company emails and confidential memos. The documents were unsealed in July after a year-long legal fight by The Washington Post and the owner of the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia.
In 2016, the drug companies convinced members of Congress and Obama administration officials to rein in the DEA and force the agency to treat them as “partners” in efforts to solve the crisis. The crowning achievement of the companies was a piece of legislation known as the “Marino bill,” named after its original sponsor, which curbed the DEA’s ability to immediately suspend the operations of drug companies that failed to follow the law.
The Post has twice investigated the industry’s battles with the DEA, first in 2016 and again in 2017 with “60 Minutes.” But the full story has never been told because so few of the people involved will talk about it. The list of people who have declined to be interviewed includes former congressman Tom Marino (R-Pa.), who first proposed the bill; former acting DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg, whose agency surrendered to the pressure; former attorney general Loretta E. Lynch, whose department did not stand in the way of the legislation; and, finally, then-President Barack Obama, who signed it into law.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/drug-industry-plan-to-defeat-dea/