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Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report 10/16/17

Michigan Counties

2 Michigan counties file joint opioid lawsuit against drugmakers, distributors
| Becker’s Hospital Review
By Brian Zimmerman

Oakland County and Wayne County in Michigan filed a joint lawsuit Thursday against 12 drugmakers and drug distributors for allegedly engaging in deceptive marketing practices to promote the widespread use of opioids.
Wayne, Oakland Counties sue drug companies over deceptive marketing
Oct 16, 2017 | The Peninsula (MI)
By Chris Galford

As the state struggles to find responses to its opioid abuse problems, Wayne and Oakland Counties have taken the legal tack, suing multiple drug companies over deceptive marketing related to the painkillers.

CBS 60 Minutes / DEA and Distributors

Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress
Oct 15, 2017 | CBS News (60 Minutes)
By Bill Whitaker

View segment here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/ Full transcript included below.
The Drug Industry's Triumph Over the DEA
| Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham

In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets.
'60 Minutes': Opioid revelations, then miraculous grace (OPINION)
Oct 16, 2017 | Orlando Sentinel (FL)
By Hal Bodeker

CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday stunned with an investigation about the opioid crisis, then inspired with the remarkable story of a prison convict turned law professor.
DEA whistleblower slams drug industry for opioid crisis
Oct 15, 2017 | AXIOS
By Erica Pandey

Joe Rannazzisi, former deputy assistant administrator at the Drug Enforcement Agency, sounded the alarm on Congress, lobbyists and the drug industry in an interview with 60 Minutes for their roles in allowing the opioid crisis to escalate.
This investigation into Congress’s ties to the drug industry shows everything people hate about Washington (OPINION)
Oct 15, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Amber Phillips

Two popular villains in politics are the subject of a new Washington Post investigation: Congress and the pharmaceutical industry.

Other Coverage

St. Lawrence County may join class action suit against opioid makers
Oct 14, 2017 | North Country Now (NY)
By Jimmy Lawton

As St. Lawrence County continues to battle a heroin and opioid epidemic and legislators are considering joining a class action lawsuit that seeks damages from prescription drug companies.
Chippewa County being asked to join lawsuit over opiods
Oct 13, 2017 | The Chippewa Herald (WI)
By Rod Stetzer

Chippewa County is being asked to be part of a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers to recover some of the county’s costs in fighting opioid abuse.
Elyria City Council set to vote on opioid lawsuit
Oct 14, 2017 | The Chronicle Telegram (OH)
By Lisa Roberson

In the lawsuit Elyria plans to file against the makers of opioid drugs, a case will be made for how costly and widespread the epidemic has become in the city.
Baton Rouge mayor favors joining opioid lawsuit against drug companies
Oct 13, 2017 | Greater Baton Rouge Business Report (LA)
By Sam Karlin

Mayor Sharon Weston Broome says she supports having Baton Rouge join a lawsuit against major drug distributors, following the lead of dozens of municipalities and states across the country in litigating the opioid epidemic.
Lawsuit filed on behalf of Beaver County against 14 pharmaceutical companies to regain cost of opioid crisis
Oct 16, 2017 | Pittsburgh 4 Action News (PA)
By Staff

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Beaver County against 14 pharmaceutical companies to regain the cost the opioid crisis that has affected its residents.
Money and Addiction: Will opioid lawsuit turn out like tobacco settlement?
Oct 15, 2017 | Texarkana Gazette (TX)
By Staff

Many readers will remember when the massive Texas lawsuit against big tobacco companies was played out right here in Texarkana's federal courthouse.
Trump Drug Czar Helped Weaken Law That Reined in Black Market Opioid Sales
Oct 15, 2017 | Mother Jones
By Kevin Drum

I almost forgot. The Washington Post has a killer story today about a law passed in 2016 that helps drug distributors avoid penalties for selling opioids to doctors who are pretty clearly reselling them on the black market:

Broadcast Media Coverage

Morning Joe
Oct 16, 2017 | MSNBC

View part 1 of clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116585?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7 View part 2 of clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116624?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7
Squawk Box
Oct 16, 2017 | CNBC

View clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116758?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7
CBS This Morning
Oct 16, 2017 | CBS

View clip here: http://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_this_morning/video/dCi5nLRisY8doVIM8SYgjAn6Km8rNng0/did-the-drug-industry-fuel-america-s-opioid-epidemic-/
Pittsburgh's Action News 4 This Morning
Oct 16, 2017 | WTAE F(ABC)
By Pittsburgh, PA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116102?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27
Erie News Now Sunrise at 6
Oct 16, 2017 | WICU (NBC)
By Erie, PA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116106?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27
Good Morning Cleveland 5 AM
Oct 16, 2017 | WEWS (ABC)
By Cleveland, OH

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116115?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27

Michigan Counties

2 Michigan counties file joint opioid lawsuit against drugmakers, distributors

| Becker’s Hospital Review

By Brian Zimmerman

Oakland County and Wayne County in Michigan filed a joint lawsuit Thursday against 12 drugmakers and drug distributors for allegedly engaging in deceptive marketing practices to promote the widespread use of opioids.
The lawsuit specifically alleges the companies knowingly misled physicians and patients about appropriate opioid use while minimizing the risks of addiction and overdose, subsequently contributing to increases in overdose deaths.
"The opioid industry has taken a page out of big tobacco's playbook," L. Brooks Patterson, county executive of Oakland County, said during a Thursday press conference announcing the lawsuit. "They utilized misleading information, marketing campaigns and studies to convince the public that their product was safe. They put profits over people, and now people are paying the price, some with their lives."
Defendents named in the suit include Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Endo International, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Insys Therapeutics, AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals and McKesson Corp.
"We are deeply troubled by the opioid crisis and we are dedicated to being part of the solution," said Purdue Pharma in a statement emailed to Becker's. "As a company grounded in science, we must balance patient access to [Food and Drug Administration]-approved medicines, while working collaboratively to solve this public health challenge … We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense."

In Oakland County, opioid overdose deaths surged 267 percent from nine deaths in 2009 to 33 deaths in 2015. Wayne County saw 817 opioid-related deaths in 2016, up from 506 in 2015.

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Wayne, Oakland Counties sue drug companies over deceptive marketing

Oct 16, 2017 | The Peninsula (MI)

By Chris Galford

As the state struggles to find responses to its opioid abuse problems, Wayne and Oakland Counties have taken the legal tack, suing multiple drug companies over deceptive marketing related to the painkillers.
The joint lawsuit has been filed against Purdue Pharma, L.P., Cephalon, Inc., Endo International, PLC, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd., Teva Pharmaceuticals, USA, Inc., Insys Therapeutics, Inc., AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., McKesson Corporation, Mallinckrodt PLC., and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. In all cases, it alleges that companies intentionally misled doctors as well as patients regarding appropriate uses, risks, safety, and efficacy of prescription opioids, glazing over addiction risks.
“This is a full-blown health crisis from which the drug companies made billions,” Wayne County Executive Warren C. Evans said. “People are dying and lives are being ruined by addiction as this horrible tragedy unfolds. We see the devastation every day in our hospitals, in our jails, and at the morgue, and it’s getting worse. There has to be a price when corporations show such disregard for human life.”
Both counties allege that the epidemic has begun at an ideological level, with companies actively trying to get doctors and patients thinking in a certain way of how to treat chronic pain, encouraging widespread prescriptions in an effort to reap huge profit margins. It’s led to increased disaster among personal lives in their view but also issues at a governmental level, including increased law enforcement, court, jail and care worker costs.
“The opioid industry has taken a page out of big tobacco’s playbook,” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said. “They utilized misleading information, marketing campaigns, and studies to convince the public that their product was safe. They put profits over people and now people are paying the price, some with their lives.”
Wayne County’s opioid-related deaths rose to 817 in 2016, over the 506 suffered the previous year. In Oakland, opioid deaths rose from nine in 2009 to 33 by the end of 2015. The case has been filed in the U.S. district court for the eastern district of Michigan.

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CBS 60 Minutes / DEA and Distributors

Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress

Oct 15, 2017 | CBS News (60 Minutes)

By Bill Whitaker

View segment here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/
Full transcript below:
In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed -- that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.
JOE RANNAZZISI: This is an industry that's out of control. What they wanna do, is do what they wanna do, and not worry about what the law is. And if they don't follow the law in drug supply, people die. That's just it. People die. "This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors' offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs."
Joe Rannazzisi is a tough, blunt former DEA deputy assistant administrator with a law degree, a pharmacy degree and a smoldering rage at the unrelenting death toll from opioids. His greatest ire is reserved for the distributors -- some of them multibillion dollar, Fortune 500 companies. They are the middlemen that ship the pain pills from manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson to drug stores all over the country. Rannazzisi accuses the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic by turning a blind eye to pain pills being diverted to illicit use.
JOE RANNAZZISI: This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors' offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs.
BILL WHITAKER: Who are these distributors?
JOE RANNAZZISI: The three largest distributors are Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen. They control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream.
BILL WHITAKER: You know the implication of what you're saying, that these big companies knew that they were pumping drugs into American communities that were killing people.
JOE RANNAZZISI: That's not an implication, that's a fact. That's exactly what they did.
In the late 1990s, opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone became a routine medical treatment for chronic pain. Drug companies assured doctors and congressional investigators -- as in this 2001 hearing -- that the pain medications were effective and safe.
Purdue Executive to Congress in 2001: Addiction is not common, addiction is rare in the pain patient who is properly managed.
With many doctors convinced the drugs posed few risks, prescriptions skyrocketed and so did addiction.

Many people who'd become addicted to painkillers turned to shady pill mills -- pain clinics with rogue doctors to write fraudulent prescriptions and complicit pharmacists to fill them -- one-stop shopping for controlled narcotics.
JOE RANNAZZISI: Pain clinics overnight popping-up – off an entrance ramp, or an exit ramp on an interstate. And all of a sudden there's a pain clinic there.
BILL WHITAKER: Had you ever seen anything like that before?
JOE RANNAZZISI: Never. In fact-- it was my opinion that this made the whole crack epidemic look like nothing.
JOE RANNAZZISI These weren't kids slinging crack on the corner. These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.
BILL WHITAKER: You know what a chilling picture that paints?

JOE RANNAZZISI: I do, 'cause I watched them get arrested, and I was the one who approved the cases.
Despite arrests of unscrupulous purveyors, opioids kept flooding the black market. The death toll kept rising. This map shows the U.S. death rate from drug overdose in 1999. By 2015, the map looked like this. Most of these deaths were opioid related. Joe Rannazzisi told us prosecuting crooked doctors and pharmacists wasn't stemming the epidemic, so he decided to move up the food chain.
JOE RANNAZZISI: There had to be a choke point. And the choke point was the distributors.
BILL WHITAKER: What took you so long to go to that choke point of the distributors?
JOE RANNAZZISI: This was all new to us. We weren't seeing just some security violations, and a few bad orders. We were seeing hundreds of bad orders that involved millions and millions of tablets. That's when we started going after the distributors.
A distributor's representative told us the problem is not distributors but doctors who overprescribe pain medication, but the distributors know exactly how many pills go to every drug store they supply. And they are required under the Controlled Substances Act to report and stop what the DEA calls "suspicious orders" -- such as unusually large or frequent shipments of opioids. But DEA investigators say many distributors ignored that requirement.
JIM GELDHOF: They had a business plan. Their plan was to sell a lotta pills and make a lot of money. And they did both of those very well."All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing. And there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time."

Jim Geldhof, a 40-year DEA veteran, ran pharmaceutical investigations from dea's detroit field office. Frank Younker supervised the agency's operations in Cincinnati. Joe Rannazzisi was their supervisor. They saw distributors shipping thousands of suspicious orders. One example: a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, ordered nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.
JIM GELDHOF: All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing. And there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time. But don't sit here and tell me that, "Well, we're not sure what a suspicious order is." Really? I mean this-- this co-- this pharmacy just bought 50 times an amount that a normal pharmacy purchases and they are in a town of 5,000 people. You don't know that that's suspicious? I mean at some point you're just turning a blind eye to it.
BILL WHITAKER: These companies are a big reason for this epidemic?
JIM GELDHOF: Yeah, absolutely they are.
JIM GELDHOF: And I can tell you with 100 percent accuracy that we were in there on multiple occasions trying to get them to change their behavior. And they just flat out ignored us.
In 2008, the DEA slapped McKesson, the country's largest drug distributor, with a $13.2 million dollar fine. That same year, Cardinal Health paid a $34 million fine. Both companies were penalized by the DEA for filling hundreds of suspicious orders -- millions of pills.
Over the last seven years, distributors' fines have totaled more than $341 million. The companies cried foul and complained to Congress that DEA regulations were vague and the agency was treating them like a foreign drug cartel. In a letter, the healthcare distribution alliance, which represents distributors, told us they wanted to work with the DEA. Effective enforcement, they wrote, "must be a two-way street."
BILL WHITAKER: Frank, you said you were tough but fair. The industry says you guys were unfair. That you were taking unfair hits at them.
FRANK YOUNKER: Tell that to the people who lost their sons and daughters. See how fair they think it is.
In 2011, more than 17,000 Americans died from opioid prescription overdoses. That same year Cardinal Health, the second largest distributor, started pushing back at Joe Rannazzisi. The companies' attorneys went over his head and called his bosses at the Justice Department, who called in Rannazzisi to have him explain his tactics.
JOE RANNAZZISI: And it in-- infuriated me that I was over there, trying to explain what my motives were or why I was going after these corporations? And when I went back to the office, and I sat down with my staff, I basically said, "You know, I just got questioned on why we're doing-- why we're doing what we're doing. This is-- this-- this is-- now this is war. We're going after these people and we're not going to stop.
BILL WHITAKER: Do you really think you were getting this pushback because you were going after big companies, Fortune 500 companies?
JOE RANNAZZISI: I have no doubt in my mind. So the question is, why would it be any different for these companies as compared to the small mom-and-pops that we had done hundreds of times before.
BILL WHITAKER: What's the difference?
JOE RANNAZZISI: The difference is, is they have a lot of money, and a lot of influence. And that's the difference.
Rannazzisi says the drug industry used that money and influence to pressure top lawyers at the DEA to take a softer approach. Former DEA attorney Jonathan Novak said it divided the litigation office. He said in 2013, he noticed a sea change in the way prosecutions of big distributors were handled. Cases his supervisors once would have easily approved, now weren't good enough.
JONATHAN NOVAK: We had been achieving incredible success in an almost unstoppable wave, and then suddenly it stopped.
Novak prosecuted cases brought to him by Joe Rannazzisi's investigators. He said his caseload started to slow down dramatically.
JONATHAN NOVAK: These were not cases where it was black -- where it was grey... These were cases where the evidence was crystal clear that there was wrongdoing going on.
He said his bosses started to bog down the system, demanding ever more evidence.
JONATHAN NOVAK: But now, three undercovers by four officers over three months, that wouldn't be enough. Maybe we need an expert to explain how recording equipment works. Maybe we need an expert to explain-- the system for prescribing. What's a prescription? It felt honestly confusing and almost insane. Where was this coming from?
Jim Geldhof says his investigations were getting bogged down too. He was looking into one mid-sized distributor that had shipped more than 28 million pain pills to pharmacies in West Virginia over five years. About 11 million of those pills wound up in Mingo County, population 25,000. Suddenly, he said, he ran into roadblocks from one of attorney Jonathan Novak's bosses.
JIM GELDHOF: "I spent a year working on this case. I sent it down there and it's never good enough. Every time I talked to this guy he wants something else. And I get it for 'em and that's still not good enough." You know? And this goes on and on and on. When this-- these roadblocks keep-- get thrown up in your face, at that point you know they just don't want the case.
BILL WHITAKER: But this is the DEA. That's what you're supposed to do.
FRANK YOUNKER: Yeah.
JIM GELDHOF: You would think.
The DEA's toughest sanction is to freeze distributors shipments of narcotics -- a step they haven't taken in almost two years.
JONATHAN NOVAK: I mean there's no denying the numbers. At the height of the opioid epidemic, inexplicably, they slowed down.
He said one big reason for the slowdown: DC's notorious revolving door. Novak said he saw a parade of DEA lawyers switch sides and jump to high-paying jobs defending the drug industry. Once they'd made the leap, they lobbied their former colleagues, novak's bosses, and argued the dea's cases were weak and ultimately would lose in court. It had a chilling effect on dea litigators.
JONATHAN NOVAK: Some of the best and the brightest former DEA attorneys are now on the other side and know all of the -- the -- the weak points. Their fingerprints are on, memos and policy and -- and -- and emails going out where you see this concoction of what they might argue in the future.
BILL WHITAKER: You and the other attorneys had been winning these cases.
JONATHAN NOVAK: All of the time.
The Justice Department is the agency that oversees the DEA. A senior attorney at the department at the time, told us in a statement, ''Department of Justice leadership was not advised that DEA had changed enforcement strategies...Any significant policy shift should have been brought to [our] attention.''
FRANK YOUNKER: There was a lotta pills, a lotta people dyin', and-- and we had tools in our toolbox to try to use and stem that flow. But it seemed down in headquarters that that toolbox was shut off.
BILL WHITAKER: You're watching an out of control epidemic and yet you both feel that at the height of this epidemic your-- your-- your hands were being tied?
FRANK YOUNKER: Yeah, if it's a war on drugs then treat it like a war.
JOE RANNAZZISI: Addiction rate was still increasing. The amount of people seeking treatment was still increasing. It was all increasing. Still, the amount of prescriptions were increasing. And we started slowing down.
As cases nearly ground to a halt at DEA, the drug industry began lobbying Congress for legislation that would destroy DEA's enforcement powers. That part of the story when we return.
In 2013, Joe Rannazzisi and his DEA investigators were trying to crack down on big drug distributors that ship drugs to pharmacies across the country. He accused them of turning a blind eye as millions of prescription pain pills ended up on the black market. Then, a new threat surfaced on Capitol Hill. With the help of members of Congress, the drug industry began to quietly pave the way for legislation that essentially would strip the DEA of its most potent tool in fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics.
JOE RANNAZZISI: If I was gonna write a book about how to harm the United States with pharmaceuticals, the only thing I could think of that would immediately harm is to take the authority away from the investigative agency that is trying to enforce the Controlled Substances Act and the regulations implemented under the act. And that's what this bill did.
The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed.
Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA's legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets -- what the DEA calls diversion.
JONATHAN NOVAK: You're not gonna be able to hold anyone higher up the food chain accountable.
BILL WHITAKER: Because of this law?
JONATHAN NOVAK: Because of this law
BILL WHITAKER: How hard does it make your job in going after the wholesale distributors?
JONATHAN NOVAK: I would say it makes it nearly impossible.
This 2015, Justice Department memo we obtained supports that. It states the bill "could actually result in increased diversion, abuse, and public health and safety consequences."
JONATHAN NOVAK: They are toothless. I don't know how they stop this now. It's a very sad state of affairs.
Who drafted the legislation that would have such a dire effect? The answer came in another internal Justice Department email released to 60 Minutes and The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act: "Linden Barber used to work for the DEA. He wrote the Marino bill."
Ad: Hi, My name is Linden Barber. I'm the director of the DEA litigation and compliance practice at Quarles and Brady's Health Law Group.
Barber went through the revolving door. He left his job as associate chief counsel of the DEA and within a month joined a law firm where he lobbied Congress on behalf of drug companies and wrote legislation. He advertised what he could offer a client facing DEA scrutiny.
Ad continued: If you have a DEA compliance issue, or you're facing a government investigation, or you're having administrative or civil litigation involving the Controlled Substances Act, I'd be happy to hear from you.
JONATHAN NOVAK: It's not surprising that this bill, that has intimate knowledge of the way that DEA, you know, regulations are enforced, the way that those laws work, was written by someone who spent a lot of time there, charged a lot of cases there.
BILL WHITAKER: Knew the workings?
JONATHAN NOVAK: Very much so.
Eric Holder was the attorney general at the time, he warned the new law would undermine law enforcement efforts to ''prevent communities and families from falling prey to dangerous drugs.'' The major drug companies -- distributors, chain drug stores and pharmaceutical manufacturers -- mobilized too. According to federal filings, during the two years the legislation was considered and amended, they spent $106 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation, claiming the DEA was out of control, making it harder for patients to get needed medication.
A particular thorn for the drug industry and the bill's sponsors was Joe Rannazzisi. He had been a witness before Congress more than 30 times and was called on again to testify about this bill.
JOE RANNAZZISI: 16,651 people in 2010 died of opiate overdose. OK. Opiate-associated overdose. This is not a game. We are not playing a game.
MARSHA BLACKBURN: Nobody is saying it is a game, sir. We're just trying to craft some legislation. Let me ask you...
Rannazzisi, who admits to having a temper, felt so strongly about the damage the bill could do, he lashed out at Marino's committee staffers.
TOM MARINO: It is my understanding that Joe Rannazzisi, a senior DEA official, has publicly accused we sponsors of the bill of --quote supporting criminals --unquote. This offends me immensely.
BILL WHITAKER: Congressman Marino from Pennsylvania said that you accused him of helping criminals.
JOE RANNAZZISI: I've never accused Congressman Marino of helping criminals. I said that this bill is going to protect defendants that we have under investigation. And if Congressman Marino thinks I accused him of something, I don't know what to tell you.
But a week after the hearing on legislation that would hobble the DEA's enforcement authority, Marino and Blackburn wrote the inspector general for the Justice Department, demanding that Rannazzisi be investigated for trying to quote "intimidate the United States Congress."
MATT MURPHY: There were people in industry that didn't care much for Joe Ranazzisi, wanted him silenced, or wanted him outta the way. Basically unceremoniously kick him to the curb.
After almost 30 years with the DEA, Matt Murphy, Rannazzisi's lieutenant, became a consultant for the drug industry -- an industry with which he's now disillusioned. He said he was shocked at the animosity he witnessed toward his friend and former boss.
MATT MURPHY: My theory is that the industry through lobbying groups donated -- a certain amount of money to politicians to get a law passed that favored the industry. And also maybe using those political ties to have Joe removed.
BILL WHITAKER: Congress launched an investigation of him?
MATT MURPHY: Right.
BILL WHITAKER: And he was out?
MATT MURPHY: Yeah, pressure was put on for him to be moved out. I'm pretty confident of that. There was no reason to take the guy who was the most qualified person in DEA to run the Office of Diversion Control out of the Office of Diversion Control.
The investigation requested by Congressman Marino against Rannazzisi went nowhere, but soon after, Rannazzisi was stripped of his responsibilities. He says he went from supervising 600 people to supervising none -- so he resigned.
JOE RANNAZZISI: We were totally focused on all these people dying and all these drugs being diverted. And we were not really looking at our flanks, waiting for somebody to come after us. So maybe that was my fault. And I just never realized that that was something that would have occurred.
In the end, the DEA signed off on the final version of the "Marino bill." A senior DEA representative told us the agency fought hard to stop it, but in the face of growing pressure from Congress and industry lobbyists, was forced to accept a deal it did not want. The bill was presented to the Senate in March of 2016.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the legislation and it passed the Senate through unanimous consent with no objections and no recorded votes.
It passed the House the same way, with members of Congress chatting away on the floor.
A week later, with no objections from Congress or the DEA, President Barack Obama signed it into law without ceremony or the usual bill signing photo-op. Marino issued a press release the next day claiming credit for the legislation.
The drug distributors declared victory and told us the new law would in no way limit DEA's enforcement abilities. But DEA chief administrative law judge, John J. Mulrooney, who must adjudicate the law, wrote in a soon-to-be-published Marquette Law Review article we obtained, that the new legislation "would make it all but...impossible" to prosecute unscrupulous distributors.
JOE RANNAZZISI: I just don't understand why Congress would pass a bill that strips us of our authority in the height of an opioid epidemic in places like Congressman Marino's district and Congressman Blackburn's district. Why are these people sponsoring bills, when people in their backyards are dying from drugs that are coming from the same people that these bills are protecting?
BILL WHITAKER: Why do you think that is?
JOE RANNAZZISI: Because I think that the drug industry -- the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores -- have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before. And these people came in with their influence and their money and got a whole statute changed because they didn't like it.
Seven months after the bill became law, Congressman Marino's point man on the legislation, his Chief of Staff Bill Tighe, became a lobbyist for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.
Since the crackdown on the distributors began, the pharmaceutical industry and law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 investigators, attorneys and supervisors from the DEA, including 32 directly from the division that regulates the drug industry.
Mike Gill, chief of staff for the DEA administrator, was hired by HDJN, one of the country's largest healthcare law firms.
And most recently, Jason Hadges, a senior DEA attorney overseeing enforcement cases during the slowdown, joined the pharmaceutical and regulatory division of DC-based law firm Hogan Lovells. He declined to speak with us.
AmerisourceBergen and McKesson declined our requests to appear on camera.
So did Cardinal Health, which three months ago hired the author of the bill, Linden Barber, as senior vice president. With Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post, we called the head of public relations of Cardinal and asked to speak with Barber.
BILL WHITAKER: This is Bill Whitaker I'm a correspondent with 60 Minutes, I was calling to see if, um, we could speak with Linden Barber.
We were told the company would not make him available.
We also tried for several months to speak to Congressman Marino. Finally, we went to his DC office.
BILL WHITAKER: Hello. I'm Bill Whitaker with, uh, 60 Minutes.
MARINO STAFFER: Yes.
BILL WHITAKER: And we'd like to speak with Congressman Marino if we could.
MARINO STAFFER: I'm going to have to refer you to our Chief of Staff.
We were told he was not available...
MARINO CHIEF OF STAFF: Can you please turn the camera off and we have to ask the camera to leave the office.
His staff then called the Capitol Hill Police on us.
CAPITOL POLICE: Just accept the uninvite and leave the area.
When Joe Rannazzisi looks back he has one regret.
Joe Rannazzisi: You know all these people that died happened under my watch. The one thing I wanted to do, the one thing that I just thought would have the most impact, is to lock up, arrest one of these corporate officers. You arrest a corporate officer. You arrest somebody that's involved in the decision process, knowing what the law is. If you make that arrest, then everybody sits up and takes notice because three-piece-suit guys just don't do well in prison. They don't.
Joe Rannazzissi now consults with state attorneys general who have filed suit against distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is running for the Senate. As for Congressman Marino, he was just nominated to be President Donald Trump's new drug czar.

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The Drug Industry's Triumph Over the DEA

| Washington Post

By Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham

In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets.
A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes.” The DEA had opposed the effort for years.
The law was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled narcotics to the black market. The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress, pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino,a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.
For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales.
The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.
Political action committees representing the industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill, including nearly $100,000 to Marino and $177,000 to Hatch. Overall, the drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016, according to lobbying reports.
“The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores, have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before,” said Joseph T. Rannazzisi, who ran the DEA’s division responsible for regulating the drug industry and led a decade-long campaign of aggressive enforcement until he was forced out of the agency in 2015. “I mean, to get Congress to pass a bill to protect their interests in the height of an opioid epidemic just shows me how much influence they have.”
Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.
Top officials at the White House and the Justice Department have declined to discuss how the bill came to pass.
Michael Botticelli, who led the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, said neither Justice nor the DEA objected to the bill, removing a major obstacle to the president’s approval.
“We deferred to DEA, as is common practice,” he said.
The bill also was reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“Neither the DEA nor the Justice Department informed OMB about the policy change in the bill,” a former senior OMB official with knowledge of the issue said recently. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of internal White House deliberations.
The DEA’s top official at the time, acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg,declined repeated requests for interviews. A senior DEA official said the agency fought the bill for years in the face of growing pressure from key members of Congress and industry lobbyists. But the DEA lost the battle and eventually was forced to accept a deal it did not want.
“They would have passed this with us or without us,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Our point was that this law was completely unnecessary.”
Loretta E. Lynch, who was attorney general at the time, declined a recent interview request.
Obama also declined to discuss the law. His spokeswoman, Katie Hill, referred reporters to Botticelli’s statement.
The DEA and Justice Department have denied or delayed more than a dozen requests filed by The Post and “60 Minutes” under the Freedom of Information Act for public records that might shed additional light on the matter. Some of those requests have been pending for nearly 18 months. The Post is now suing the Justice Department in federal court for some of those records.
Hatch’s spokesman, Matt Whitlock, said the DEA, which had undergone a leadership change, did not oppose the bill in the end.
“We worked collaboratively with DEA and DOJ . . . and they contributed significantly to the language of the bill,” Whitlock wrote in an email. “DEA had plenty of opportunities to stop the bill and they did not do so.”
Marino declined repeated requests for comment. Marino’s staff called the U.S. Capitol Police when The Post and “60 Minutes” tried to interview the congressman at his office on Sept. 12. In the past, the congressman has said the DEA was too aggressive and needed to work more collaboratively with drug companies.
Drug industry officials and experts blame the origins of the opioid crisis on the overprescribing of pain pills by doctors. The industry notes that the DEA approves the total amount of opioids produced each year.
Industry officials defended the new law as an effort to ensure that legitimate pain patients receive their medication without disruption. The industry had long complained that federal prescription drug laws were too vague about the responsibility of companies to report suspicious orders of narcotics. The industry also complained that the DEA communicated poorly with companies — citing a 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office — and was too punitive when narcotics were diverted out of the legal drug distribution chain.
“To be clear — this law does not ‘decrease’ DEA’s enforcement against distributors,” said John Parker, a spokesman for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents drug distributors. “It supports real-time communication between all parties in order to counter the constantly evolving methods of drug diversion.”
But DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II has reached the opposite conclusion.
“At a time when, by all accounts, opioid abuse, addiction and deaths were increasing markedly” the new law “imposed a dramatic diminution of the agency’s authority,” Mulrooney wrote in a draft 115-page article provided by the Marquette Law Review editorial board. He wrote that it is now “all but logically impossible” for the DEA to suspend a drug company’s operations for failing to comply with federal law. The agency declined to make Mulrooney available for an interview.
Deeply involved in the effort to help the industry was the DEA’s former associate chief counsel, D. Linden Barber. While at the DEA, he helped design and carry out the early stages of the agency’s tough enforcement campaign, which targeted drug companies that were failing to report suspicious orders of narcotics.
When Barber went to work for the drug industry in 2011, he brought an intimate knowledge of the DEA’s strategy and how it could be attacked to protect the companies. He was one of dozens of DEA officials recruited by the drug industry during the past decade.
Barber played a key role in crafting an early version of the legislation that would eventually curtail the DEA’s power, according to an internal email written by a Justice Department official to a colleague. “He wrote the Marino bill,” the official wrote in 2014.
Barber declined repeated requests for an interview.
With a few words, the new law changed four decades of DEA practice. Previously, the DEA could freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community, giving the agency broad authority. Now, the DEA must demonstrate that a company’s actions represent “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat,” a much higher bar.
“There’s no way that we could meet that burden, the determination that those drugs are going to be an immediate threat, because immediate, by definition, means right now,” Rannazzisi said.
Today, Rannazzisi is a consultant for a team of lawyers suing the opioid industry. Separately, 41 state attorneys general have banded together to investigate the industry. Hundreds of counties, cities and towns also are suing.
“This is an industry that’s out of control. If they don’t follow the law in drug supply, and diversion occurs, people die. That’s just it, people die,” he said. “And what they’re saying is, ‘The heck with your compliance. We’ll just get the law changed.’ ”
‘DRUG DEALERS IN LAB COATS’
2006: 52,277 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
Joe Rannazzisi came to DEA headquarters as an outsider with an attitude. He worked as an agent in Detroit, where he watched prescription drugs flood small towns and cities in the Midwest.
Hundreds of millions of pain pills, such as Vicodin and oxycodone, ended up in the hands of dealers and illegal users.
Rogue doctors wrote fraudulent prescriptions for enormous numbers of pills, and complicit pharmacists filled them without question, often for cash. Internet pharmacies, supplied by drug distribution companies, allowed users to obtain drugs without seeing a doctor.
“There were just too many bad practitioners, too many bad pharmacies, and too many bad wholesalers and distributors,” Rannazzisi recalled.
Rannazzisi, a burly, tough-talking Long Islander, was assigned to head the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control. He had a law degree, a pharmacy degree and had spent years navigating the DEA’s bureaucracy.
The office was seen as a backwater operation whose 600 investigators had toiled for years over prescription drug cases with little or none of the recognition that went to those who investigated illegal street drugs like heroin or cocaine.
Rannazzisi brought an aggressive approach to the diversion control office.
The year he took over, Linden Barber was promoted to run diversion control’s litigation office, which crafted the legal arguments that supported the team. He was a former Army lawyer who served in Iraq. The cadre of attorneys who worked for him saw him as a tough litigator unafraid of an influential industry.
Barber and Rannazzisi formed a powerful combination that the drug companies would learn to fear. “Early on he did really good work,” Rannazzisi said. “He jumped into the Internet cases when he first came here.”
After shutting down the Internet pharmacies, Rannazzisi and Barber pursued the pain management clinics that replaced them and soon became as ubiquitous in South Florida as the golden arches of McDonald’s. To get there, drug dealers and users would take the “Oxy Express” down Interstate 75.
“Lines of customers coming in and going out,” said Matthew Murphy, a veteran DEA supervisor in Boston whom Rannazzisi hired to be chief of pharmaceutical investigations. “Armed guards. Vanloads of people from the Appalachia region driving down to Florida to get a prescription from a pain clinic and then get the prescription filled, going back to wherever they’re from.”
Back home, each 30-pill vial of oxycodone was worth $900.
DEA officials realized they needed a new strategy to confront this new kind of drug dealer.
“They weren’t slinging crack on the corner,” Rannazzisi said. “These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.”
Rather than focusing on bad doctors and pharmacists, Rannazzisi and Barber decided to target the companies feeding the pill mills: the wholesale drug distributors, some of them massive multinational corporations.
“I developed the legal framework to pursue actions against distributors,” Barber would later say. “We initiated a record number of administrative actions; the government collected record-setting civil penalties.”
Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, drug companies are required to report unusually large or otherwise suspicious orders. Failure to do so can result in fines and the suspension or loss of DEA registrations to manufacture or distribute narcotics.
When the DEA suspected that a company was ignoring suspicious sales, the agency filed an “order to show cause.” That gave a company at least 30 days to explain why the agency should not revoke its registration.
In the most egregious cases, the DEA employed an “immediate suspension order,” allowing the agency to lock up a distributor’s drugs. The orders instantly halted all commerce in controlled substances on the grounds that the drugs constituted an “imminent danger” to the community.
Under Rannazzisi in the mid-2000s, the DEA repeatedly warned the companies that they were shipping unusually large volumes of opioids to customers around the country. Despite the warnings, some companies continued the shipments.
The DEA soon began bringing enforcement actions against distributors. In 2007, the agency moved against McKesson, the nation’s largest drug distributor and the fifth-largest corporation in the nation, for failing to report hundreds of suspicious orders placed by Internet pharmacies. McKesson settled the case, paying a $13.2 million fine.
In 2008, Rannazzisi and Barber targeted Cardinal Health, another large drug distributor, for filling “blatantly suspicious” orders from online drugstores. Cardinal paid a $34 million fine.
The DEA would ultimately bring at least 17 cases against 13 drug distributors and one manufacturer. The government said it assessed nearly $425 million in fines over a decade. Those fines reflect only a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue the companies receive each year.
“It’s a cost of doing business,” Murphy said.
Along the way, Rannazzisi was making powerful enemies in the industry.
“They definitely didn’t like Joe Rannazzisi,” Murphy said. “Not at all. He wasn’t viewed as a person that they could work with. And maybe that was appropriate. He didn’t want to work with industry much.”
Rannazzisi was unmoved by their complaints.
“We’re worried about their feelings being hurt because we were doing our job?” he said. “We were making them comply. We were holding their feet to the fire.”
Murphy recalled a telling meeting with drug company representatives.
He said the president of one of the drug companies sat on the other side of the table, put his hands up and said, “ ‘You got us. What can we do to make this right?’ ” Murphy recalled.
Murphy said he had heard the same thing from drug dealers.
There was an important difference, Murphy noted.
“You know,” he said, “the heroin and cocaine traffickers didn’t have a class ring on their finger from a prestigious university.”THIS IS WAR’
2011: 121,468 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
In 2011, Linden Barber left the DEA to join the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Quarles & Brady. He started a practice representing drug companies. “If you have a DEA compliance issue or you’re facing a government investigation,” he said in a promotional video for the firm, “I’d be happy to hear from you.”
Barber’s move turned out to be a key moment in the struggle between drug companies and the government, but it was far from the only one. Dozens of top officials from the DEA and Justice Department have stepped through Washington’s revolving door to work for drug companies.
Two former U.S. deputy attorneys general have defended Cardinal, one of the “Big Three” companies, along with McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, that together control 85 percent of drug distribution in the United States. Jamie Gorelick, an attorney for WilmerHale, was deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. Craig S. Morford, Cardinal’s chief legal and compliance officer, was acting deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.
As Rannazzisi’s investigators increased their pressure, those lawyers began to contact their former colleagues in government.
In late 2011, Morford went over Rannazzisi’s head to then-DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart as the agency again investigated Cardinal, which had sent millions of doses of oxycodone to a small number of pharmacies in Florida, including two CVS stores in Sanford.
“Michele,” Morford wrote to Leonhart in October 2011, “we are committed to working with DEA to address the challenging problem of diversion and welcome the opportunity to meet with you and your team to address these issues in a non-adversarial way.” He signed the handwritten note “Craig.”
Gorelick said in an email that she wrote to then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole “to ask that my client be afforded due process.” Morford did not respond to requests for comment.
Around Thanksgiving, Rannazzisi said he received a call about the Cardinal-CVS case from James H. Dinan, then-chief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces program at the Justice Department. Rannazzisi said Dinan told him, “We’re getting calls from attorneys, former Justice people, that are saying you guys are doing some enforcement action.”
Four months later, Rannazzisi received a late-night call from Dinan summoning him to appear at Justice headquarters early the next morning to explain his actions in the Cardinal-CVS case to Cole.
“Please call me in the morning,” Dinan wrote, according to Rannazzisi. “I want to make double sure nothing unreversible happens before [Cole] is briefed.”
Rannazzisi was stunned. He had brought hundreds of these cases and had never been called to brief Cole, the second-most-powerful law enforcement official in the country.
The meeting quickly “spiraled out of control,” Rannazzisi said. “It was adversarial to say the least.”
Rannazzisi believed the message was clear: Back off.
Cole, now a lawyer in private practice, said he was not trying to pressure Rannazzisi.
“Hearing what Cardinal had to say could inform DEA of facts they may not have known,” Cole said in a statement. “I did not tell Mr. Rannazzisi how to come out on the Cardinal matter and certainly did not discourage him from going after any company in violation of any statutes or regulations,” he said.
Either way, Rannazzisi was defiant when he returned to the office from the Justice Department and sat down with his staff.
“Now this is war,” he recalled telling them. “We’re going after these people, and we’re not going to stop. We’re just going to continue to move forward. And we don’t really give a damn any more what the department wants.’”‘IT WAS BAD’
2013: 149,853 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
The field generals in the DEA’s war on opioids are men and women such as Jim Geldhof, a 43-year agency veteran who managed the diversion control program in the Detroit field office. He witnessed firsthand the heartbreak pain pills were causing across the Midwest.
One night, at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, Geldhof sat quietly as the Portsmouth High School gym fell dark and a large screen flickered with photographs.
Geldhof was in tears.
“Sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters in graduation pictures,” he recalled. “Some were wearing football jerseys. They had their whole lives ahead of them, and then they were gone.”
The families always asked: What was the DEA doing to stop the flow of drugs?
By 2013, it had become increasingly difficult to answer that question. Cases were languishing at headquarters. At first, Geldhof wasn’t sure why.
Behind the scenes, a major shift was taking place at DEA headquarters.
An appeals court in Washington, D.C., had been reviewing a case that Rannazzisi’sinvestigators brought against Walgreens, alleging that some of its pharmacies in Florida were selling more than a million pain pills a year. A typical pharmacy sold 74,000.
The DEA had used an immediate suspension order against Walgreens, arguing that the drug sales constituted an “imminent danger” to the community. The DEA moved to shutter a large Walgreens distribution center in Jupiter, Fla., that supplied nearly 1,000 pharmacies along the East Coast.
Walgreens fought back.
The company’s attorney, Gregory G. Garre, the former U.S. solicitor general during the second Bush administration, argued the “imminent danger” standard was vague and not supported by law. The original 1970 act did not define imminent danger.
Judges on the appellate panel voiced similar concerns during oral arguments.
No one knew how the appeals court would rule, but Linden Barber had argued while he was still at the DEA that the vague standard could cripple the cases the agency was building. Now Barber and other industry lawyers were making that argument on behalf of their clients. Their position was common knowledge in the diversion legal office, and it resonated with Clifford Lee Reeves II, a career Justice attorney who had recently taken the job Barber once held, according to Jonathan P. Novak, a lawyer who worked in the office.
“Lee kept trying to shut us down,” said Novak, now in private practice. “He kept telling us about the Walgreens case and the imminent danger standard and that we were going to lose all of our cases and we didn’t have enough information to go forward.”
The DEA declined to make Reeves available for an interview.
Rannazzisi, a lawyer himself, told the DEA attorneys that the law was on their side.
“I said, ‘Stop worrying. We have never lost an imminent danger case,’ ” he said.
The warnings by Barber and other industry lawyers divided the 15 attorneys in diversion control’s legal office.
“Linden carried a lot of weight, and people listened to what he had to say,” Novak said. “He knew all the arguments. He had the clout. He was the big gun. He put the fear of God into people.”
Frank Younker, a DEA supervisor in the Cincinnati field office and 30-year veteran of the agency, said the legal office began demanding more evidence from investigators.
Starting in 2013, shortly after the Walgreens case was argued and Reeves arrived, investigators felt they were now required to establish that their evidence was “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Previously, investigators had to show only “a preponderance of evidence.”
“We had years of very aggressive enforcement,” said Younker, who retired in 2014. “It was like we were in a Porsche and all of a sudden, someone hit the brakes.”
DEA officials later said the standards did not change.
Novak said Reeves and his second-in-command, Jason Hadges, also required investigators to transcribe their interviews and hire high-priced expert witnesses, even though there was no budget for them.
Novak said it seemed like there was never enough evidence to please his bosses.
He said they would ask: “Maybe we need an expert to explain how recording equipment works? Maybe we need an expert to explain the system for prescribing?
“It felt, honestly, confusing and almost insane.”
The delays cost months, sometimes years.
Geldhof, the DEA program manager in Detroit, was investigating a midsize Ohio-based drug distributor. Between 2007 and 2012, Miami-Luken had shipped 20 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies in West Virginia. About 11 million wound up in one county, Mingo, population 25,000.
Despite the rising death rate in West Virginia — the highest in the nation — Geldhof said his pleas in 2013 to halt Miami-Luken’s operations were ignored by the legal office at headquarters.
“First we got blown off by the company,” he said, “and then we got blown off by our own lawyers.”
Novak suspected another reason for the slowdown.
At times, he said, some of his colleagues appeared more concerned with pleasing the industry than working on behalf of the public. Some of the lawyers had simply given up fighting the industry and seemed to be preparing for a future working with the companies they were supposed to be regulating, he said.
“It was not just one person who left the office; everyone started to leave. That’s your payout. You do your time, and more and more people were auditioning for the industry. It stopped us from doing our jobs.”
The departures gave the industry an unfair advantage, Novak said.
“There was a fear,” he said. “It comes from seeing that some of the best and brightest former DEA attorneys are now on the other side and know all of the weak points. Their fingerprints are on memos and policy and emails.”THE LAWMAKERS
2014: 164,691 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
The major drug companies also brought their campaign to Capitol Hill. One of their key allies was Tom Marino, then a two-term Republican congressman from Williamsport, Pa.
Marino was a former county and federal prosecutor with deep hometown ties to a district that was reeling from the opioid epidemic.
On Feb. 18, 2014, Marino introduced the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, making an effort to define what constitutes “imminent danger.” The proposal raised the DEA’s standard for suspending drug shipments by requiring that the agency establish “a significant and present risk of death or serious bodily harm that is more likely than not to occur.”
It attracted 14 Republican co-sponsors, chief among them Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), also from a region in the grip of the epidemic.
The DEA mobilized to defeat Marino’s measure. One internal DEA memo obtained by The Post and “60 Minutes” noted that the bill essentially eliminates the agency’s power to file immediate suspension orders of drug shipments. The new law “is fixing a problem that doesn't need fixing,” a DEA official wrote.
On April 8, 2014, with the bill stalled, Marino confronted the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Marino told Holder the DEA was treating the companies like “illicit narcotics cartels.”
“This mind-set — it’s extremely dangerous to legitimate business,” Marino said.
He told Holder that he wanted the Justice Department to meet with industry executives. When Marino wrote to Holder three weeks later urging him to set up the meeting, the congressman added a handwritten note: “It would be great to work together on this. — Tom.”
Within the DEA and the Justice Department, Marino’s overtures to Holder set off alarms. On May 7, 2014, Matthew Strait, the DEA’s congressional liaison officer, detailed ways “to push back” on Marino’s bill, according to an email he wrote.
It was followed by a flurry of DEA memos. One said, “This bill is without basis in case law or Congressional findings.” Another said the bill “would constitute perhaps the greatest reduction in the Attorney General’s authority under the Controlled Substances Act since the Act’s passage in 1970.”
Later in May, Marino introduced a second version of his bill, with slightly altered language. Blackburn was again a co-sponsor, but this time two Democrats were on board: Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and Rep. Judy Chu of California.
On June 4, Bill Tighe, Marino’s chief of staff, wrote to Peter Kadzik, Justice’s top congressional liaison officer, thanking him for setting up a meeting with the industry executives.
Tighe asked Kadzik to coordinate with the industry’s point person: Linden Barber.
Kadzik wrote to a colleague at Justice about Barber.
“Linden Barber used to work for DEA,” Jill Wade Tyson, another Justice congressional liaison officer, responded in an email. “He wrote the Marino bill.”‘OH, CRAP’
Through the summer of 2014, as the fight over the second Marino bill unfolded, the congressman and other lawmakers pressed for a meeting with the DEA to understand why Rannazzisi was so opposed. Congressional staffers set a conference call for July 2.
Rannazzisi’s relationship with the Hill was already frayed, and his disdain for diplomacy had become legendary. His aides advised him against joining the call.
Rannazzisi ignored them.
At first, the conversation was cordial. Rannazzisi and DEA officials discussed the legislation with staffers from the Judiciary and the Energy and Commerce committees.
But the tone soon turned testy.
One DEA official asked why the law was necessary.DRUG INDUSTRY PUSHES BACK
A congressional staffer responded, “We’re just trying to create a better relationship between industry and DEA.’”
Rannazzisi blew up.
“You’ll be protecting criminals,” one participant recalled Rannazzisi saying.
Eric Akers, another DEA liaison to Congress, was stunned.
“As soon as he said it, I said, ‘Oh, crap,’ ” recalled Akers, who also was on the line. “It was about as undiplomatic as you could be. I don’t think he meant it as a threat. But any chance of salvaging the relationship with Congress just got immensely harder.”
The congressional staffers were furious. “We can’t work with you,” one told the DEA.
Rannazzisi refused to meet with the industry executives, saying it would be improper because many of the drug companies were under active DEA investigation or in settlement negotiations with the Justice Department.
On July 29, the Marino bill passed the House and went to the Senate.
The Justice Department was so concerned that it took the unusual step of having Attorney General Holder publicly oppose the bill.
“A recently passed House bill would severely undermine a critical component of our efforts to prevent communities and families from falling prey to dangerous drugs,” Holder said in a July 31 news release.
The bill stalled in the Senate.
On Sept. 18, during a congressional hearing, Marino complained to Leonhart, the DEA administrator, about Rannazzisi’s comments on the conference call.
“It is my understanding that Joe Rannazzisi, a senior DEA official, has publicly accused we sponsors of the bill of, quote, ‘supporting criminals,’ unquote,” Marino told her. “This offends me immensely.”
A week later, Marino and Blackburn accused Rannazzisi of trying to “intimidate the United States Congress” and asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate.
Rannazzisi said he never said the bill would protect criminals.
“I said that this bill is going to protect defendants that we have under investigation,” he said in a recent interview. “And if they don’t like the truth, well, I don’t know what to tell ’em.”A NEW LAW
2015: 179,972 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
With Rannazzisi under attack, the industry effort gained momentum. Marino introduced yet another version of his bill in the House on Jan. 22, 2015. He announced that the Energy and Commerce Committee would hold a hearing five days later.
One of the witnesses was Linden Barber.
Barber told the committee about the Walgreens case. He was still pressing the industry’s long-standing argument about the need for a clearer legal definition of the DEA’s imminent danger standard.
The case had not ended up setting a precedent that undermined the standard. Rather than take the case to trial, the company agreed to settle and pay what was then a record $80 million fine. Still, Barber argued the DEA faced legal jeopardy.
“Indeed, many of my colleagues believe that the [Walgreens] case would have resulted in a narrowing of DEA’s authority if the agency had not settled its dispute,” Barber said. “As a supporter of DEA’s mission, I urge this committee to take legislative action that clarifies the meaning of imminent danger.”
On April 21, 2015, the House took up Marino’s bill. On the floor of Congress, Marino said:
“This bill will bring much-needed clarity to critical provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. In doing so, we will ensure that the DEA’s authorities are not abused and threatened by future legal challenges; foster greater collaboration, communication and transparency between the DEA and the supply chain; create more opportunities to identify bad actors at the end of the supply chain; and, most importantly, be certain that prescriptions are accessible to patients in need.”
The House passed the bill by unanimous consent. Not one lawmaker opposed the measure.
That same day, Leonhart, who had supported Rannazzisi’s aggressive approach, announced that she was retiring as DEA administrator amid reports that some of her agents had attended sex parties funded by Colombian cocaine cartels.
For the industry and its supporters on Capitol Hill, the pieces were falling into place.
A month later, the Justice Department named a new DEA chief who said he wanted to mend the rift between the agency and the drug industry. Chuck Rosenberg was a former U.S. attorney in Virginia and Texas who had served as the chief of staff to then-FBI Director James B. Comey.
After Rosenberg came to the DEA, the agency began putting out a new message.
“Rosenberg wanted to paint a new face on the DEA for the Hill,” said Regina LaBelle, the chief of staff for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time. “He wanted to show them the softer side of the DEA, and he wanted to work with industry.”
In October 2015, one of the last remaining obstacles to the bill was removed. Rannazzisi was pushed aside at diversion control. With the inspector general’s investigation into his comments hanging over his head, Rannazzisi retired from the DEA after a 30-year career.
The investigation went nowhere. But, Rannazzisi said, “It destroyed me.”
By this time, Holder had left and Lynch was the attorney general. Her office informed Marino that the DEA had met with 300 industry representatives and Justice was committed to “working more closely” with the drug companies.
“We value these opportunities to communicate and work with our partners in the pharmaceutical industry,” Kadzik, Lynch’s congressional affairs chief, wrote to Marino.
At the same time, the DEA was in negotiations with Hatch’s staff to amend the bill for the Senate’s consideration.
The newly proposed language required the DEA to show that a company’s conduct posed a “substantial likelihood of an immediate threat” of death, serious bodily harm or drug abuse before the agency could seek a suspension order.
Whitlock, Hatch’s spokesman, said the new language was proposed by the DEA.
“Senator Hatch has had a strong working relationship with DEA for his entire term of service and worked collaboratively for months with DEA here. Any claim that he tried to steamroll DEA or would ever seek to steamroll DEA is simply incorrect.”
A Nov. 30 email from Tyson, the Justice Department congressional liaison officer, to a Senate staffer shows that the DEA agreed to the bill with reluctance.
“DEA felt this wasn’t a great solution, but was the best of the options offered to us, even if it did not fully address the concerns we had previously laid out for you,” she added, according to the email, which was provided by staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
The bill would also give drug companies the opportunity to submit “corrective action” plans — outlines of how they were going to fix problems — before the DEA could sanction them. The DEA would be required to consider those plans before imposing penalties.
On March 17, 2016, the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent. On April 12, the House approved the Senate version, also by unanimous consent.
The bill still needed the president’s signature. Opposition from the DEA or Justice could derail it, but the two agencies had given up the fight.
The senior DEA official said the agency worked with Congress to improve the bill under difficult political circumstances. The agency believed earlier versions of the bill would have forced it to meet a criminal standard before issuing immediate suspension orders. “The original version of the bill was unworkable,” the official said.
The congressional affairs office at the Justice Department told the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy that it no longer objected to the bill, according to Botticelli, then chief of the office.
On April 19, Obama signed the bill. The White House issued a one-page news release announcing its enactment.
Marino also issued a release taking credit for the legislation.
“With this law, our drug enforcement agencies will have the necessary tools to address the issue of prescription drug abuse across the country. I applaud the hard work of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress and President Obama for realizing the importance of this legislation.”
Industry groups also thanked Obama. They agreed to work with the DEA “to ensure that the law is implemented efficiently and effectively,” said John M. Gray, chief executive of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents the nation’s drug distribution companies.
Two months after Obama signed the bill, Rosenberg appeared on Capitol Hill. Hatch praised him.
“I’ve been told the DEA’s relationship with supply chain stakeholders has improved since you’ve taken the helm at DEA,” the senator said. “I want to just say I applaud your efforts on this front.”
He then asked Rosenberg how he viewed the relationship between the DEA and the opioid industry going forward.
Rosenberg said the agency had been slow to address industry’s concerns and had failed to communicate with them.
“The overwhelming majority, 99 plus percent, are our allies in this thing,” Rosenberg said.EPILOGUE
2016: 197,713 deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000.
John Mulrooney, the chief DEA administrative law judge, has been documenting the falling number of immediate suspension orders against doctors, pharmacies and drug companies. That number has dropped from 65 in fiscal year 2011 to six so far this fiscal year, according to the DEA. Not a single order has targeted a distributor or manufacturer since late 2015, according to Mulrooney’s reports, which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mulrooney said in his reports that the judges under him were handling so few cases at the DEA that they began hearing the cases of other federal agencies.
In his article planned for the winter issue of the Marquette Law Review, Mulrooney wrote: “If it had been the intent of Congress to completely eliminate the DEA’s ability to ever impose an immediate suspension on distributors or manufacturers, it would be difficult to conceive of a more effective vehicle for achieving that goal.”
Mulrooney’s article also criticized the law for allowing companies to submit corrective action plans before the DEA could sanction them.
He likened that provision to allowing bank robbers to “round up and return ink-stained money and agree not to rob any more banks.”
The DEA said in a statement last week that it is still pursuing reckless doctors and rogue businesses with a wide variety of tools.
“We will continue fighting the opioid crisis and continue to use all the tools at our disposal to combat this epidemic,” the statement said.
Since the DEA started to crack down on the opioid industry a decade ago, pharmaceutical companies and the law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 DEA officials — 32 of them directly from the division. They include two officials who managed day-to-day operations; the deputy director of the division; the deputy chief of operations; and two chiefs of policy.
After nearly 30 years with the DEA, Matthew Murphy, Rannazzisi’s lieutenant, retired in 2011. He formed a drug industry consulting firm and went to work for the people he used to face across the table.
“I feel guilty,” Murphy said in a recent interview. “Because every day a lot of people die of an opioid-heroin overdose. Whether it’s a pill or heroin, people die every day because of it. And it shouldn’t be happening.”
One of the most recent departures was Jason Hadges, the senior DEA attorney overseeing pharmaceutical enforcement cases who, according to former agency supervisors and lawyers, had been demanding a higher standard of proof on cases. Hadges left the DEA in May to join the pharmaceutical and biotechnology regulatory division of Hogan Lovells, a high-powered D.C. law firm. He declined to comment, citing “client sensitivities.”
In January, Mike Gill, who had served as the chief of staff to DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, left the agency to join one of the nation’s largest health-care law firms. He declined to discuss why the DEA dropped its opposition to the bill or his new job.
On Oct. 1, Rosenberg himself resigned from the DEA.
Last December, seven months after the bill became law, Marino’s chief of staff took a job as a lobbyist with the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Bill Tighe had served as Marino’s point man on the legislation. The association was a key backer of the bill. Tighe declined to comment.
In July, Linden Barber left Quarles & Brady to join Cardinal Health as the company’s chief regulatory attorney. After being the target of two DEA enforcement actions, Cardinal had become one of the biggest backers of the bill.
Marsha Blackburn, who co-sponsored the House version of the bill, received $120,000 in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. She did not respond to requests for an interview. She announced this month that she will run for the seat of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is not seeking reelection.
In addition to Blackburn, Marino and Hatch, The Post sought comment from the other nine co-sponsors of the 2016 bill. Only four responded.
A spokesman for Whitehouse said that the DEA could have expressed its opposition at any time.
“The fact that it passed the entire Senate without hearing any sort of communication that would have triggered concern of at least one senator doesn’t really pass the smell test,” the spokesman said.
Jim Geldhof, the DEA program manager in Detroit, retired from the agency at the end of 2015 after 43 years on the job. He said the companies were fully aware of their responsibilities under the law.
“When you’re selling half a million pills to some pharmacy and you’re telling me that you don’t know what the rules are for a suspicious order?” said Geldhof, who is now working as a consultant to lawyers suing the industry. “All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing, and there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time. It was about money, and it’s as simple as that.”
Just before Geldhof left, his two-year quest to persuade the DEA to take action against Miami-Luken finally paid off. In November 2015, the DEA accused the company of multiple violations of the law for allegedly failing to report orders for tens of millions of pain pills from pharmacies, most of them in West Virginia. That case — the most recent one to target a distributor — is pending.
Of the millions of pills sent to Mingo County, many went to one pharmacy in Williamson, the county seat, population 2,924. In one month alone, Miami-Luken shipped 258,000 hydrocodone pills to the pharmacy, more than 10 times the typical amount for a West Virginia pharmacy.
The mayor of Williamson has since filed a lawsuit against Miami-Luken and other drug distributors, accusing them of flooding the city with pain pills and permitting them to saturate the black market.
“Like sharks circling their prey, multi-billion dollar companies descended upon Appalachia for the sole purpose of profiting off of the prescription drug-fueled feeding frenzy,” the lawsuit says.
Marino, now in his fourth term, continues to represent northeastern Pennsylvania and Lycoming County, population 116,000.
His nomination as drug czar, which would put him in charge of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is pending.
Marino declined to be interviewed for this story, but last year he told The Post:
“We had a situation where it was just out of control because of [Rannazzisi],” Marino said. “His only mission was to get big fines. He didn’t want to [do] anything but put another notch in his belt.”
Since 2014, the year Marino first introduced his bill, 106 people have died of opioid overdoses in Lycoming County. Over six days this summer, 53 people in the county overdosed on opioids. Three of them died.
On a warm night in July, four families gathered in a large, manicured back yard in Marino’s district to share their sorrow over the children and siblings they had lost to opioids.
Around the table they went, each with a different story, each death leaving the same wreckage behind.
“I got the phone call Nov. 12 at 2:39 in the afternoon,” Tina Snyder recalled. Her 24-year-old son, Lee Winder, had been found in a shopping center parking lot near his car outside a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Winder had become addicted to pain pills and died of a heroin overdose.
“All I remember hearing is ‘Ms. Snyder, this is Chuck Kiessling, the Lycoming County coroner,’ ” she recalled. “I could literally feel my heart breaking, and I didn’t say anything. He said, ‘We found your son at 7 o’clock this morning.’
“And I just kind of like melted to the floor, started crying. And the girl I was working with took the phone and was talking to him. And I just kept begging her to tell me it wasn’t true.”Responses from bill sponsors
Sponsors and co-sponsors of the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act were all contacted for this piece, their responses are below. Highlighted names are sponsors of the bill.
Rep.Tom Marino
Pa.
R
Declined request.
Rep. Judy Chu
Calif.
D
Did not respond.
Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis
Fla.
R
“My hope was that this legislation would eradicate the scourge of opioid addiction while allowing seniors, Veterans and other people with significant pain to get the relief they need with a legitimate prescription,” Bilirakis said in a statement.
Rep. Douglas A. Collins
Ga.
R
Did not respond.
Rep. Ryan A. Costello
Pa.
R
Did not respond.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn
Tenn.
R
Did not respond.
Rep. Peter Welch
Vt.
D
“I supported Rep. Marino’s bill because it clarified the rules of the road for distribution companies seeking to comply with agency directives and freed up agency resources to go after bad actors in the system. If the intent of the law is not being fulfilled, then Congress should conduct oversight hearings and make changes that address concerns raised by the DEA,” Welch said in a statement.
Sen. Orrin Hatch
Utah
R
Hatch’s spokesman, Matt Whitlock, said the DEA, which had undergone a leadership change, did not oppose the bill in the end. “We worked collaboratively with DEA and DOJ . . . and they contributed significantly to the language of the bill,” Whitlock wrote in an email. “DEA had plenty of opportunities to stop the bill and they did not do so.”
Sen. Marco Rubio
Fla.
R
Did not respond.
Sen. David Vitter
La.
R
Did not respond. No longer in Senate.
Sen. Bill Cassidy
La.
R
Did not respond.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
R.I.
D
A spokesman for Whitehouse said the DEA could have expressed its opposition at any time. “The fact that it passed the entire Senate without hearing any sort of communication that would have triggered concern of at least one senator doesn’t really pass the smell test,” the spokesman said.

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'60 Minutes': Opioid revelations, then miraculous grace (OPINION)

Oct 16, 2017 | Orlando Sentinel (FL)

By Hal Bodeker

CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday stunned with an investigation about the opioid crisis, then inspired with the remarkable story of a prison convict turned law professor.
Maybe we need the professor working on the opioid epidemic. That fellow gets results.
The “60 Minutes” investigation with The Washington Post revealed horrifying details about a crisis that takes 91 lives each day in this country. The main points:
Major distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson haven’t been keeping track of the drugs, which have flooded into communities and been given to people who don’t need them.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is undermined by a revolving-door culture in which its former employees go to work for the drug industry.
Congress stripped the DEA of power to keep drugs off the street. Congress did that through legislation called the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.
As The Post explains: “The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article.”
The legislation made it through both houses by unanimous consent, and President Barack Obama signed it last year.
The Post details the more than $106 million spent by companies from 2014 to 2016 in lobbying for the bill.
Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., was a chief advocate for the bill, and in an incredible irony, he is President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The “60 Minutes” report featured whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi, a former senior DEA official who shared his fury about efforts to curb the agency.
Anyone familiar with the opioid crisis could relate to Rannazzisi.
Bill Whitaker, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, succinctly explained that the drug companies are more influential with lawmakers than their constituents’ suffering.
After breaking hearts with the opioid report, “60 Minutes” provided hope with Steve Kroft’s profile of Shon Hopwood. The CBS program billed it as “an incredible tale of redemption.”
Hopwood became a lawyer in prison while serving a sentence for armed bank robbery. He is so skilled that one case he prepared while behind bars was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Now he is an associate professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Hopwood was full of gratitude about his success. “It was people that helped, that went out of their way to provide grace to me,” he tells Kroft. “That made the difference.”
He explained his transformation: “The bank person robber has long been dead and gone.”
We’ll hope for some miraculous transformations in Washington to help our country. We need them.

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DEA whistleblower slams drug industry for opioid crisis

Oct 15, 2017 | AXIOS

By Erica Pandey

Joe Rannazzisi, former deputy assistant administrator at the Drug Enforcement Agency, sounded the alarm on Congress, lobbyists and the drug industry in an interview with 60 Minutes for their roles in allowing the opioid crisis to escalate.
Key quote: "This is an industry that's out of control. What they want to do, is do what they want to do, and not worry about what the law is. And If they don't follow the law in drug supply, people die. That's just it. People die."
On the companies at fault: "The three largest distributors are Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen. They control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream."
On the drug distribution industry: "These weren't kids slinging crack on the corner. These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats."
On Congress' lobbied decision to limit the DEA's abilities: "[T]he drug industry — the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores — have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before. And these people came in with their influence and their money and got a whole statute changed because they didn't like it."

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This investigation into Congress’s ties to the drug industry shows everything people hate about Washington (OPINION)

Oct 15, 2017 | The Washington Post

By Amber Phillips

Two popular villains in politics are the subject of a new Washington Post investigation: Congress and the pharmaceutical industry.
The deeply reported story by Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein, in partnership with “60 Minutes,” latches Congress and drug companies so closely together on a piece of opioid legislation that it raises some big questions, including: How much industry involvement in crafting legislation is too much? And is Congress doing enough to address the nation's prescription drug epidemic, or, have lawmakers, at the behest of drug companies making billions off addictive pain killers, potentially made it worse?
Higham and Bernstein report that in April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon to keep prescription narcotics from going straight from major drug companies to the nation's streets.
The law took away the DEA's ability to freeze suspicious shipments from drug companies, shipments the agency was concerned were on their way to the wrong hands.
This new law was supported by some of the nation's major drug distributors, opposed by the DEA and, according to this investigation, was pushed through Congress and the federal government after its opponents were neutralized or had joined the other side.
“The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drugstores have an influence over Congress that has never been before,” former DEA investigative agent Joseph T. Rannazzisi says in the story. He was forced out of the agency in 2015.
In connecting the dots between Congress, the drug industry and this new legislation, the reporting in this story also illustrates what people despise about Washington. Here are a few examples:
A revolving door between the drug industry and those who regulate and legislate it:This stat from the investigation is eyebrow-raising: Since the DEA started to crack down on the opioid industry a decade ago, drug companies and their law firms have hired dozens of DEA officials, most of them from the division that regulates the drug industry.
“Some of the best and brightest former DEA attorneys are now on the other side and know all of the weak points,” said Jonathan P. Novak, a DEA lawyer. “Their fingerprints are on memos and policy and emails.”
A clear money trail between the drug industry and the lawmakers who go to the mat for them: The investigation finds that the drug industry contributed at least $1.5 million to two dozen lawmakers who supported versions of this legislation, including more than $100,000 each to three key players, Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah.)
Marino and the bill's supporters argue that this law cracks down on an overly aggressive DEA and protects drug companies from any unfair or misguided use of federal power.
Alleged abuse of power: There's a lot of it in this story. In the heat of a related battle over the DEA's case against a major drug company, Rannazzisi, the aggressive DEA investigator, says he believes the then-deputy attorney general told him to back off (an accusation the official denies).
Later, Rannazzisi's opponents in Congress asked for, and received, a government watchdog investigation into Rannazzisi's rhetoric about them, accusing him of trying to “intimidate” Congress. Rannazzisi denies their accusations and says the investigation is why he retired after 30 years.
Congress glossing over controversial legislation: As you can tell by now, this legislation stirred up strong feelings among drug-policy officials, in part because it directly affects a crisis that left a death toll three times greater than the total U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War.
But the broader Congress never got to debate this law. The final version of the bill eventually passed both chambers using a procedural tool that requires no debate on the floor. As a result, the bill technically passed without any opposition.
Scandal: In the middle of all this, one of the DEA's heads resigned after news reports that some of her agents attended sex parties in Colombia funded by cocaine cartels. This isn't directly related to the story, but it adds to the appearance of problems at the agency.
Antagonizing the media: As The Post and the “60 Minutes” team were trying to report this, they went to Capitol Hill to try to talk to Marino, the bill's author. Marino's staff called Capitol Police as the reporters tried to interview him at his office. This is remarkable, given that reporters routinely swarm lawmakers in Congress.
The Post is suing the Justice Department in federal court for access to records that it says could shed additional light on this entire saga. Some of those requests have been pending for nearly 18 months.

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Other Coverage

St. Lawrence County may join class action suit against opioid makers

Oct 14, 2017 | North Country Now (NY)

By Jimmy Lawton

As St. Lawrence County continues to battle a heroin and opioid epidemic and legislators are considering joining a class action lawsuit that seeks damages from prescription drug companies.
he county recently met with an attorney from Simmons, Hanly and Conroy.
Law firm co-founder Paul J. Hanly, Jr. met with the legislators and the county attorney to discuss the issue, but the county has not yet come to a decision.
The litigation is premised on a theory that opioid drug manufacturers worked collectively to widely circulate marketing materials declaring opioids safe – despite contrary medical statistics and medical studies and, as such, these manufacturers have played a significant role in the current drug epidemic that is devastating counties across New York State and the rest of the country, according to county attorney Stephen Button.
“They were interested in gauging the County’s interest in pursuing similar litigation to that which is already pending against drug manufacturers of prescription opioids. After reviewing the materials provided by the firms, Simmons, Hanly and Conroy seemed the appropriate choice for discussing this matter,” he said.
Cases currently pending and brought by counties seek to recover the costs counties have incurred in fighting the epidemic, from addiction and health treatment costs to criminal justice costs.
The New York counties of Suffolk, Erie, Broome, Orange, Dutchess, Seneca, Sullivan and Schenectady are in pending litigation regarding the same claims.
Simmons, Hanly and Conroy is probably best known as the firm that commenced litigation and ultimately succeeded against Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories for damages suffered by the class as a result of the usage and prescription of Oxycontin.
That litigation resulted in a settlement of $75 million. The firm has also been involved with litigation against manufacturers Johnson & Johnson (Fentanyl), Merck and Co. (Vioxx), Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals (Darvocet/Darvon) and Pfizer (Celebrex), and many others.
St. Lawrence County Chairman Kevin Acres says there is some interest from the legislators to pursue the lawsuit, but he isn’t personally leaning in favor of it.
“The gist of their argument was about marketing and how the prescription drugs are being marketed to people as safe,” he said. “But if you are an individual and you are taking a drug that you need and you’ve got this addiction, it’s up to them to break this addiction on a medical level,” he said.
Acres says the argument is that many of those who are now using heroin became addicted first to prescription painkillers, but transitioned to heroin due to the lower price and accessibility.
“This part of the case isn’t actually proved. That link hasn’t been proven yet before a judge or a jury,” he said.
Acres said it’s unclear exactly how much money the county would receive in a successful lawsuit, but said the law firm plans to spend $10-$20 million in New York litigation.
In an earlier interview with Legislator Joseph Lighfoot said he was unsure whether or not he will support the lawsuit, but said it’s definitely worth investigating. He said it’s likely that funding gained through such litigation would be used for efforts to combat the county’s drug problem.
St. Lawrence County, like many places in the nation, has seen a massive rise in heroin use with needles found on a near-daily basis in the streets and parks in Ogdensburg in Massena.
St. Lawrence County has the second-highest opioid related-inpatient hospital admissions rate in the state and in the past four years, and drug-related hospital stays have risen more than 60 percent, according to the state Department of Health.
DOH figures also indicate at least 31 people died from opiate or heroin overdoses in St. Lawrence County between 2010 and 2014 and the number appears to be rising.
A massive drug bust June 2 netted 106 arrests, 2,600 bags of heroin, 700 bags of cocaine and 3,005 bags of Fentanyl. The combined street value of the drugs was estimated at $94,575 by police, who also recovered $89,000 in cash.
Additionally, investigators seized three handguns, two stun guns, a dagger, a shotgun, and a bullet proof vest stolen from a Tompkins County Sheriff’s Deputy.
Despite the major bust, heroin arrests and overdoses have continued throughout the county.

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Chippewa County being asked to join lawsuit over opiods

Oct 13, 2017 | The Chippewa Herald (WI)

By Rod Stetzer

Chippewa County is being asked to be part of a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers to recover some of the county’s costs in fighting opioid abuse.
A resolution for the county to join a lawsuit will go before the county’ Executive Committee at its 4 p.m. meeting Tuesday, Oct. 17 in room 302 of the county courthouse, 711 N. Bridge St., Chippewa Falls. If the committee supports the resolution, it will be presented to the full Chippewa County Board.
“It is unclear what the fiscal impact will be to Chippewa County. The main cost will be staff time to gather records, comply with discovery requests, and to determine what costs were attributable to the opioid epidemic that were borne by Chippewa County,” said a financial impact statement given to committee members.
The county would hire the law firms of von Briesen and Roper, Crueger Dickinson and Simmons Hanley Conroy to represent it in the lawsuit.
“While it is unrealistic to think that the lawsuit will solve the (opioid) problem, (big drug manufacturers) should be responsible for funding solutions to a problem they created,” said literature provided by the legal firms to the Executive Committee.
The Eau Claire County Board is scheduled to vote on a similar resolution at its meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in room 1277 of the Eau Claire County Courthouse, 721 Oxford Ave.
How much money the county would get from the lawsuit if it won is unknown, said Keith R. Zehms, the corporation counsel for Eau Claire County said in a memo. He said filing an lawsuit is supported by the Wisconsin Counties Association, or WCA. Zehms said the WCA maintains that large drug companies created “a false marketing campaign designed to give the medical community and the public the false impression that opioids were safe and (effective) for long term care.”
Several other government bodies have already filed lawsuits against the makers of opioids. One of those lawsuits says in part: “Opioids include brand-name drugs like OxyContin and Perococet and generics like oxycodone and hydrocodone. They are derived from or possess properties similar to opium and heroin, and as such, they are highly addictive and dangerous.”
Zehms said the WCA said counties have subjected to increased court services, social work, foster care, medical needs and mental health issues because of the opioid epidemic.
Paying attorney fees and expenses will depend on whether the counties win the lawsuit, Zehms said. “The contingent fee is 25 percent of the recovery (the money the counties would get if they win) which would be paid first and the amount remaining would be reduced by the costs and disbursements which had been advances,” Zehms said.

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Elyria City Council set to vote on opioid lawsuit

Oct 14, 2017 | The Chronicle Telegram (OH)

By Lisa Roberson

In the lawsuit Elyria plans to file against the makers of opioid drugs, a case will be made for how costly and widespread the epidemic has become in the city.
Law Director Scott Serazin will present legislation Monday during a City Council meeting to approve entering into a contract with local attorney Brian Balser to sue drugmakers.
Balser, who once worked on litigation against the makers of the banned Fen-Phen diet drug, will work on the city’s behalf in what could turn into a long and complicated legal fight. He will work for the city on a contingency basis, which will mean the city is not responsible for any upfront costs but would pay a 25 percent fee if the lawsuit is successful.
City Council’s Finance Committee has approved the legislation, and a vote by full Council is expected Monday.
“The lawsuit will take the same shape as the opioid lawsuit the city of Lorain filed, although we haven’t gotten to the point of who will be the defendants,” Serazin said. “We know we want to go after the drug manufacturers who put out misleading information to doctors that led to patients getting hooked on these drugs.”
Serazin said the case likely will take years to be settled and likely will be consolidated with similar cases that are being filed across the state.
“But it is better to be in and at the table than to not be represented at all,” he said.
By filing a lawsuit, Elyria joins cities including Lorain and Dayton in the fight for financial compensation. The lawsuit also will be similar to one filed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.
There is no clear-cut way to determine what, if anything, Elyria could see as compensation, but Serazin said Elyria is one of few cities its size that maintains a narcotics unit in its police department.
“The cost of keeping the drug unit going is a lot for city, and that could be a factor,” he said.
Mayor Holly Brinda said that depending on the year, the cost to have the narcotics unit varies between $600,000 and $700,000.
“Last year was especially high because of heavy surveillance costs,” she said. “Last year, the chief estimated that with the salaries and benefits of the five officers plus expenses out of the Law Enforcement Trust Fund, we were probably at over $772,000.”
The figures are estimates because there were times when detectives assigned to another part of the investigative unit assisted in narcotics enforcement, and there were times when the narcotics detectives assisted in investigations not related to drugs.
Because the city is self-insured in terms of how it deals with employee health insurance, Serazin said, the lawsuit could even look at employee health care costs associated with any employee who sought treatment through the city’s self-funded insurance.

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Baton Rouge mayor favors joining opioid lawsuit against drug companies

Oct 13, 2017 | Greater Baton Rouge Business Report (LA)

By Sam Karlin

Mayor Sharon Weston Broome says she supports having Baton Rouge join a lawsuit against major drug distributors, following the lead of dozens of municipalities and states across the country in litigating the opioid epidemic.
Parish Attorney Lea Anne Batson added a measure to the Metro Council’s agenda several weeks ago that would have allowed the city-parish to contract the law firm Baron & Budd to file the lawsuit. But the council balked, largely because they were not included in the early discussions to craft the proposal and put it on the agenda. Councilman Chandler Loupe, with the backing of the rest of the council, deleted the item from the agenda in September.
Now, Broome and her top staffers say they plan to meet with several law firms and move forward with the lawsuit. The mayor plans to bring the measure back before the Metro Council, but is not offering a timeline.
“We plan to move forward like many other cities and parishes throughout the country have done,” Broome says.
Dozens of cities, parishes, counties and states have filed lawsuits against some of the largest drug manufacturers in the country, a trend that has ramped up in recent years. Others, including the initial proposal in Baton Rouge, have targeted the three largest drug distributors—AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp.
The three companies have denied wrongdoing and a spokeswoman for AmerisourceBergen previously told Daily Report it plans to “vigorously” fight the suit if it’s filed.
It’s unclear whether the Metro Council will sign off on the idea, as several council members say they haven’t learned enough about it. At least one—councilman Buddy Amoroso—rejects the lawsuit on the merits, calling it a form of lawsuit abuse.
“To me it was not a process issue,” Amoroso says. “I’m just opposed to that type of lawsuit.”
In recent months, several parishes in Louisiana have filed suits against major drug companies. The Louisiana Department of Health—a major state agency—also is suing drug manufacturers, alleging fraudulent marketing of opioids that escalated the public health crisis here.
The trend, and the legal theories behind the suits, are analogous to the tobacco litigation of the late 1990s, says University of Kentucky law professor Dan Ausness, who is studying the litigation.
But Ausness also warned the opioid lawsuits may be more difficult for cities and states to win, even if the drug companies engaged in fraught practices. Much like the tobacco lawsuits, their best bet is to reach a settlement with the drug companies. “It’s not a slam dunk,” he says.
Private individuals have been bringing lawsuits against drug companies for at least two decades, Ausness found, often with little success. The trend of governmental entities filing suits began relatively recently, and he is unaware of any that have been resolved, either by settlement or litigation.
However, it is possible drug distributors could be more liable than the manufacturers in the opioid crisis, given they had more control over where the drugs went, Ausness says. They’re also one step closed to users, pharmacists and doctors than manufacturers are.

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Lawsuit filed on behalf of Beaver County against 14 pharmaceutical companies to regain cost of opioid crisis

Oct 16, 2017 | Pittsburgh 4 Action News (PA)

By Staff

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Beaver County against 14 pharmaceutical companies to regain the cost the opioid crisis that has affected its residents.
Beaver County hired Robert Peirce & Associates, as well as Marc J. Bern and Partners in New York to represent it. According to the agreement, Beaver County will not pay either firm up front, and any fees will be paid out of funds recovered as a result of the lawsuit.
Robert Peirce & Associates is holding a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning to discuss the lawsuit. Visit this page and click the video player to watch the live video.
“The County has an obligation to help its citizens. This litigation presents one of the few times that a County will have an opportunity to recover taxpayer funded costs and expenses, and the Beaver County Commissioners are to be commended for taking this action,” said Robert Peirce, one of the attorneys for Beaver County and a former Allegheny County Commissioner.
The lawsuit is the first to be filed in western Pennsylvania on behalf of a county and only the second filed in the state.

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Money and Addiction: Will opioid lawsuit turn out like tobacco settlement?

Oct 15, 2017 | Texarkana Gazette (TX)

By Staff

Many readers will remember when the massive Texas lawsuit against big tobacco companies was played out right here in Texarkana's federal courthouse.
The cigarette makers eventually settled with the state for about $17.6 billion.
Big Tobacco is still paying that settlement and it hasn't been too much of a burden. They just increased the price of cigarettes and went on to deal with other states and the federal government with the money forked over by millions of smokers. In the end, government and lawyers raked in the cash. The tobacco industry did have to change its marketing strategy a bit, but the same cigarettes are still available just about everywhere—selling well enough to generate record profits for the top tobacco companies—and smokers are still getting sick, still dying.
We wonder if the results will be any different now that Big Pharma has come under fire.
Last week, Bowie County joined a number of states, counties and cities in suing several pharmaceutical makers over the growing opioid addiction crisis in the U.S.
The plaintiffs claim that Big Pharma used deceptive marketing to convince doctors opioid painkillers were safe and to write more and more prescriptions. This, they say, led a nation of prescription medication addicts.
So, how will this play out? We hope the results will be better for the real victims in all of this, though we won't hold our breath.
Just like tobacco, there is a desperate market for opioid painkillers and where there is a market there is money. While the plaintiffs may have good intentions here, we can't help but think that in the end there will still be large numbers of opioid addicts, large pharmaceutical companies making big profits. The only thing that will change is that governments and lawyers will get a big payoff to go away.
Stay tuned.

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Trump Drug Czar Helped Weaken Law That Reined in Black Market Opioid Sales

Oct 15, 2017 | Mother Jones

By Kevin Drum

I almost forgot. The Washington Post has a killer story today about a law passed in 2016 that helps drug distributors avoid penalties for selling opioids to doctors who are pretty clearly reselling them on the black market:
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress.
….The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.
….Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.
Apparently the law was essentially written by a former DEA attorney who went to work for the drug industry in 2011. Read the whole thing for more, including the 18 months of stonewalling from DEA and the Justice Department when the Postrequested records related to the law.

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Broadcast Media Coverage

Morning Joe

Oct 16, 2017 | MSNBC

View part 1 of clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116585?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7
View part 2 of clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116624?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7
Rough transcript: many people who had become addicted to pain killers turned to shady pill mills. pain clinics with rogue doctors to write fraudulent prescriptions and complicit pharmacists to fill them, one-stop shopping for controlled narcotics. >> pain clinics overnight popping up off an entrance ramp or an exit ramp of an interstate. >> have you ever seen anything like that? >> never. in fact, it was my opinion that this made the whole crack epidemic look like nothing. these weren't kids slinging crack on the corner. these were professionals who were doing it. they were just drug dealers in labs coats >> that was part of a "60 minutes investigation with the washington post. that aired last night. on the forces behind the nation's opioid epidemic. the man we just heard from is the former chief of the dea's office of diversion control, he was responsible for cracking down on doctors, pharmacies, drug manufacturers and distributors who skirted the nation's prescription drug laws. the dea began bringing in enforcement actions against distributors and the companies ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. then, as the washington post reports in april 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in us history, congress effectively stripped the drug enforcement administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics on to the nation's streets. joining us now is the washington post's scott heiam one the reporters who conducted the investigation. thank you for being on the show. lets try and spell this out its complicated. who is the whistleblower? who is this whistleblower and what exactly is he alleging? >> good morning, guys. his named is joe ranacizzi and we came across him during the course of an investigation. my partner on this story, lenny bernstein, was trying to get answers to questions about why so many people were dying from opioid overdoses and where were all these drugs coming from. and he began to make a lot of phone calls, do kind of gum shoe reporting, checking out court records, calling as many people as he could. he came across this guy named joe rannazzisi who had been forced out of his job at the dea, joe rannazzini. he ran the division that oversees the pharmaceutical industry at the dea. he felt that he could not do his job at the height of this epidemic and he was forced out of his job in the face of intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry on capitol hill that was reaching into the dea, that was reaching into the department of justice. we began to interview other people out in the field, dea investigators, men, women, very dedicated investigators, who said that their cases were being slowed down. so, suddenly, we found ourselves kind of in the middle of seeing the opioid wars from the front row between the dea and the pharmaceutical industry and members of congress and the dea was losing, shockingly. >> and these pain clinics that were popping up everywhere, tell us how they emerged into the story. >> well, the epidemic began with internet pharmacies. those were quickly shut down. can you literally get a prescription for oxycontin, oxycodone, vicodin, with bogus pharmacies and get them shipped to your house. as soon as those were shut down these pain clinics began to pop up all over the place. rogue doctors, shady pharmacists. you walk in pay $200, $300 for a prescription and walk out with a vial of oxycodone. and there were so many people doing this. these parking lots in south florida, all across the country were just filled with drug dealers, drug users, people in vans and beat-up cars and driving down i-75 from west virginia, ohio to get their drugs and bring them back up to their communities and selling them on the street for great profit. >> mark? >> scott, did anybody get rich off of this?>> a lot of people got rich. all the way from drug dealers on the streets all the way up to the pharmaceutical companies. this is a $13 billion a year industry. a lot of people were making a lot of money. a lot of people were turning a blind eye to what was happening. >> did they lobby congress to try to keep that branch from doing anything about it? >> of course. the pharmaceutical industry, we found, joe, spent about $106 million lobbying on this bill and other legislation in capitol hill. and it was also written by an industry lawyer. you know, you were up there on the hill and i imagine you saw some of this firsthand. lobbyists write a lot of legislation. and a lot of times it doesn't have a huge impact. but to write a piece of legislation at the height of the opioid epidemic that takes away the dea's most important enforcement tool kinda takes your breath away. >> so tell us about the bill that exacerbated the problem and who was behind it. >> so, tom merino was the principle sponsor of this legislation. it was written by an industry lawyer. and basically the dea's most effective enforcement tool is something called the immediate suspension order. those are used for times when there are companies that are sending down stream hundreds of millions of pills unchecked and the dea steps in and says enough is enough. we're shutting you down. so this law changes the definition of imminent threat. so companies now -- in the past, imminent threat meant, you know, the dea could go in and shut down a company. now it's an immediate threat. and that's a very, very difficult bar to meet for the dea. >> steve ratner? >> i confess this has not been in my field of vision. just doing a quick search around google a minute ago, it appears that this law passed the senate unanimously, which is not something you see very often in washington. how should we think about that, assuming what i've said is correct? >> a lot of things get passed by -- it's called uc in this town. and so i -- you know, our reporting shows that a lot of members of congress didn't really understand what this bill did. they thought that it would do what the title says and that's ensure patient access, improve drug enforcement. but it really does neither of those things. i don't think people read this bill and quite understood exactly what it would do. the lawyers who wrote this knew exactly what they were doing. they changed the language ever so slightly, but language matters in law. and by changing that language they changed 40 years of law under the controlled substances act. >> richard? >> is there any way that you can get the ama or some other body to limit what doctors are free to prescribe in this area if the drug companies can't be blocked, if individuals can't be stopped from buying, can you get doctors stopped from overprescribing? >> that's really where the problem begins, is doctors who are overprescribing and doctors who are selling prescriptions for cash. the problem is that there are so many doctors who are doing that and there are so many pain clinics and pain management clinics doing this, the dea felt like they were playing a game of whack-a-mole. everytime they would hit a doctor or take down a pain clinic another would pop up immediately. they felt they had to go up footed chain and make a difference by shutting down the companies that were sending these pills downstream. >> joe? >> joe scarborough here, scott. theres another problem here. you're talking about these pill clinics that were popping ups. also psychiatrists are not reimbursed by insurance companies for counseling, for talking to people. they're reimbursed for looking at them, writing a quick script, handing it to them and having them go. i heard this story time and time again about people who were prescribed the wrong thing, people were prescribed pain medication when they shouldn't have been prescribed pain medication. i guess what surprises me is that this is so widespread. when my older boys were in college, there were four, five, six kids that they either knew or knew of that died of an overdose of this stuff from so-called good families. this wasn't just happening in darkened vans in south florida. it's happening all across america. that's why it surprises me that congress is actually not going to be more proactive in cracking down on what you've uncovered. >> it surprised us, too, joe. this is an epidemic that knows no bounds. there are very few degrees of separation now. everybody knows somebody who has died or knows somebody who knows somebody who has died from this epidemic. my neighbor's son just passed away. one of the top dea officials, his grandson just died of an overdose. it knows no bounds, no political parties. it's in almost every community across the country. and it is a stunning turn of events for congress to pass a bill that basically protects the drug industry from the dea going after it. and we got access to a law review article that the dea chief administrative judge has written and we obtained that from the marquette law review. you can look it up. he eviscerates this law and says it's the worst possible thing that congress could do at the height of the epidemic. it takes away that immediate suspicion tool but is also weakens other tools that the dea has in its tool box.

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Squawk Box

Oct 16, 2017 | CNBC

View clip here: https://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116758?token=36862bc8-fd30-46d9-aeaf-f232b87d63f7
Rough transcript: welcome back to "squaw box. the washington post reporting this morning the dea's ability to go after drug distributors was weakened at the height of the epidemic. the investigation was a joint investigation with 60 minutes and for more i want to bring in lenny bernstein hes the washington post health reporter and co author of that story. good morning to you, lenny we watched the "0 minutes piece last night it's an important piece. how did you get on to this originally >> originally about 18 months or so ago i was asked to try to explain to our readers how so many hundreds of millions of pills could spill out of the supply chain and onto the street i started calling around and ended up finally making contact with joseph renezicci who had recently retired as the head of the dea office that controlled and regulated the control of the flow of those pills. >> lenny, it seemed to me that there were a lot of fathers to this crisis and a lot of blame to go around. where do you raise the largest blame and in terms of where this goes from here? >> i don't know where exactly to lay the largest blame. it is -- there's no dispute that congressman tom moreno, president trump's nominee for drug czar carried a bill for two years that weakened and hobbled the drug enforcement agency in its efforts against large drug distributors that senator oren hatch finalized the negotiations and that the drug industry with its lobbyists was influential in accomplishing that. where does it go from here is anyone's guess. this law is clearly weakening the dea in that respect, possibly someone might want to bring it up and see if it could be repealed. and then we have moreno's nomination coming up before the end of the year for the post that would give him control over the nation's drug control policy. >> what was the trump administration's response to all of this, to your report? >> the trump administration didn't speak to us very much because all of this happened under the obama administration's watch. at one point we thought we might speak to attorney general jeff sessions but that didn't happen. so most of our reporting was being done among the obama administration. >> that ruins everything, lenny. >> let me ask you then about the drug industry's response >> the drug industry spoke to us mostly through the health care distributors association the lobby for those giant companies that bring drugs from the manufacturers down to the street they weren't really willing to do a sitdown interview or on camera interview with 60 minutes. they did give us a number of points that we reflected in the piece. they pointed out, for example, that doctors are responsible for starting the opioid crisis and i think there's general agreement that over prescribing is the start of the opioid crisis and they made other points, but they didn't really want to respond directly to some of the allegations we raised in the story. >> watching it, lenny, it was kind of interesting to watch because your main whistle-blower had some personality they talk about his anger and the righteous indignation of the legislators, they seem to be hanging their hat on the getting pain medication to people that really, really need it. they were actually able to act like what are you saying that there's something about this law that's based on -- or this -- saying that we're doing it for these untoward reasons like lobbying, or money, for the drug distributors i mean, they felt really good about what they were doing it seemed like. so it was strange, wasn't it i didn't -- you know, i didn't -- i started saying how can this be and then i ended up thinking maybe it's more nuanced than i thought. >>well joe's a cop and joe treats the large companies as the regulatees and he's the regulator. he warned them over and over and over again that they were allowing these pills to spill onto the street. finally he came in and sanctioned them. now does the law help anyone get drugs who wasn't able to get them i would say read the law. there's nothing in there that -- there's nothing in there that brings drugs to people who were unable to get them from their pharmacist there's a study which hasn't even been done that's it. >> lenny, it's an important report if you missed "60 minutes" or haven't made it to the washington post go out and check out both. >> i was watching football and it happened to come on and it wasn't some anti-republican anti-trump story so i said maybe i'll just watch this maybe i'll just see it>> and you learned >> and i learned.

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CBS This Morning

Oct 16, 2017 | CBS

View clip here: http://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_this_morning/video/dCi5nLRisY8doVIM8SYgjAn6Km8rNng0/did-the-drug-industry-fuel-america-s-opioid-epidemic-/
Rough transcript: An investigation found the drug industry contributed at least $1.5 million to 23 lawmakers who co-sponored the bill, weakening enforcement laws at the height of the opioid epidemic. Congressman Tom Marino, the chief advocate for that bill, is now President Trump's nominee to be federal drug czar. Nancy Cordes is on Capitol Hill with more information about the bill and its key sponsors. Nancy good morning. Good morning this bill was sold here on capitol hill as a way to ensure that patients had access to pain medication. But former dea officials say it actually stripped their ability to go after suspicious shipments. For example when one town of 400 people in west virginia got 9 million hydrocodone pills over just 2 years. as mentioned pennsylvania's bill whitaker and tennessee's marsha blackburn introduced this bill back in 2015. each of them received signifcant contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. more than 70,000 dollar for marino more than 160,000 for blackburn. and more than 177,000 for utah senator orrin hatch who negotiated this bill with the dea. it ended up passing with unaminous consent and signed by president obama. former administration officials some of them now say they didnt realize how much this one bill would change things. we reached out to marino and blackburn's office they did not respond. senator hatch's office told the washington post they actually collaborated with the dea and the agency had many opportunities to put the breaks on this

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Pittsburgh's Action News 4 This Morning

Oct 16, 2017 | WTAE F(ABC)

By Pittsburgh, PA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116102?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27
Rough Transcript: beaver county is filing suit against pharmaceutical companies to recoup some of the costs from the opioid addictions. today it will hold a conference to discuss the details. lawsuit. the stut hopes to recover all taxpayers costs associated with the ep yoid-- opioid epidemic, costs to the criminal justice system and the beaver county health department. the lawsuit is the first one to be fired in western pennsylvania county, and at the state.

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Erie News Now Sunrise at 6

Oct 16, 2017 | WICU (NBC)

By Erie, PA

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116106?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27
Rough Transcript: opioid addiction continues to be a problem in erie county, and now government is trying to make those companies that manufacture the drug accountable. erie county government is taking a different approach to solve the isue by going straight to the source. the companies that make and sel opioid painkillers. the county may soon join a lawsuit against major drug companies. a national legal firm is handling the lawsuit, and would be paid a percentage of any damages or settlement. there will be no charge to the 3 county. erie county executive kathy dahlkemper says this is a step in the right direction and her opponent in this year's race executive, republican candidate art oligeri agrees. 3 3 "we're coming together to work as one unit to go after these drug companies who we believe is a big cause to the opioid epidemic that has not only hit erie county but the nation." "there's a spike i sales, there's a spike in opioid related deaths. 3 there's a correlation and as bussinesses they know what that variable." 3 3 while both candidates agree on the opioid isue they didn't agree on everything when it comes to this race. dahlkemper says she wants to continue the momentum that has ben established while she's ben in ofice. such as the "up for the jobs program." oligeri disagrees and says it's time for a change. and says he issues deal with spending and taxes.##

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Good Morning Cleveland 5 AM

Oct 16, 2017 | WEWS (ABC)

By Cleveland, OH

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30116115?token=e979c0f3-aa2d-4964-b252-1905b9e40e27
Rough Transcript: elyria city council is set to vote on a plan to file a lawsuit against the makers of opioids. the chronicle telegram reports they have approved the measure to hire a local attorney, who will file that lawsuit. the opo epidemic -- opioid epidemic.

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