Merchants of Death: The pharmaceuticals, Congress and the US opioid epidemic
By
Genevieve Leigh
19 October 2017
A glimpse into the pervasive corruption and political machinations that have gone into creating the deadly drug epidemic in the United States was provided last week in a joint investigative report by the Washington Post and CBS News’ “60 Minutes” television program.
The investigation exposed a bipartisan scheme spearheaded by Republican Congressman Tom Marino to block the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from reining in the illicit sale of opioids. The flooding of economically devastated working class communities with opioid pain-killers has profited the drug distribution corporations to the tune of billions of dollars while addicting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of people across the US.
The effort to eviscerate the already inadequate oversight powers of the DEA started in 2014 and culminated in the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, which passed by overwhelming votes in Congress and signed into law by then-President Barack Obama.
The main purpose of the legislation was to stop the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control from halting drug shipments for unusually large and unexplained sales. Previously, for example, when several Walgreens pharmacies in Florida sold more than one million opioid pills in a year, compared to a nationwide average of 74,000, the Office of Diversion Control could impose fines and suspend distribution, preventing the drugs from reaching the streets pending the results of an investigation. The 2016 law effectively ended the ability of the DEA to suspend such orders.
The campaign pursued by Marino and his colleagues was aimed at purging the oversight agency of any officials or…