In the wake of the “60 Minutes“/Washington Post story on the drug industry using its political influence to pass a law to undercut Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to police pill-mill suppliers, the sponsors of the bill have lashed back, claiming they were simply acting in the interest of patients.
“Leave the conspiracy theories to Netflix,” wrote Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. In a column responding to the story, Hatch said the piece falsely depicted lawmakers as “in the pocket of the drug industry.”
Hatch wrote that he was concerned about reasonable access to drugs, and “with the support of patient advocates and others,” negotiated a version of the bill to introduce in the Senate.
Not only does the story provide robust evidence that pharmaceutical supply companies were involved in every step of the legislative process — with a drug lobbyist even ghostwriting the original bill — the patients rights’ organizations supporting the effort have extensive ties to the drug industry.
One of the primary letters to lawmakers in support of the legislation was signed by several self-described “patient advocacy and health professional” organizations, including the Alliance for Patient Access, a group that receives support from drug companies involved in the opioid industry.
The metadata of the letter, dated three days after the bill was introduced, shows a name unrelated to the patient groups that signed it. The document properties show that the letter was created by Kristen L. Freitas, the vice president for federal government affairs of the Healthcare Distributors Alliance. HDA is the trade group that represents McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the principal suppliers of pharmaceutical opioids in the country. Freitas, filings show, was one of the drug industry lobbyists working to influence lawmakers in support of the bill.
Freitas did not respond to a request for comment; neither did the patient organization that sponsored the letter.
An investigation last year by the Charleston Gazette-Mail revealed that major distributors had disregarded rules to report suspicious orders to the DEA while flooding West Virginia with over 480 million pain pills over a five year period. The unusually large shipments, from firms such as McKesson and Cardinal, have been directly linked to the skyrocketing opioid addiction problem in the region.
In 2016, there were 14,400 overdose deaths caused by prescription opioids, such as Percocet and Oxycontin. Many of the addicts that use increasingly popular street opioids, such as heroin and black market fentanyl, gained their addiction first through pain pills prescribed by a physician. A recent analysis found that over the next decade, opioid deaths could claim the lives of as many as 500,000 Americans.
In 2012, the DEA moved to temporarily revoke the license of a Cardinal Health distribution center in Florida after the firm was found violating its own internal safeguards and providing increasingly massive opioid shipments to several CVS pharmacies in the state.
The Cardinal incident provoked the industry to push back against the DEA. Cardinal hired former Department of Justice officials, including former Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, to pressure the Obama administration against enforcement actions. D. Linden Barber, a former DEA official-turned industry lobbyist, drafted legislation that was given to Rep. Tom Marino, R-Penn., to curtail the DEA’s ability to revoke distributors’ licenses. After initially hitting a roadblock in 2014, the bill passed the following year. In July of this year, Linden secured a job working directly for Cardinal as the company’s chief regulatory counsel.
Campaign finance records show that the drug industry provided hefty donations to the legislators spearheading the legislation. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., two of the other sponsors of the legislation, received $5,000 each from the Healthcare Distribution Alliance PAC. Scott Gottlieb, now serving as President Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration chief, published a column sharply criticizing DEA action to revoke the Cardinal license, and, as we reported, later received speaking fees from the Healthcare Distribution Alliance and opioid manufacturers.
Backlash from the story has been swift. Several lawmakers have expressed an interest in repealing the law in question.
On Tuesday, in response to the story, Marino removed himself from consideration as the next federal drug czar, a position Trump had nominated him for.
Top photo: The prescription medicine OxyContin is displayed Aug. 21, 2001 at a Walgreens drugstore in Brookline, Mass.
YOU can not go to one website to find the truth. . . comments are all to often closed –
T R U T H . . . isn’t easy to come by
“Narcotics and Covert Intelligence: How the CIA Commandeered the “War on Drugs” is from Global Research….disgusting FACTS – not fake news. Where is the record of the Senate’ hearing on the C.I.A. drug smuggling into the U.S.A. with the blessings of Ronald Reagan / George H.W. Bush administration….redacted or declared SECRET I don’t know….
“from Global research”
Narcotics and Covert Intelligence: How the CIA Commandeered the “War on Drugs”
worth reading – and a couple of other articles……..
our government is actually against our people – –
If you read them I believe you will draw the same conclusion…..sadly
The POLICY of Washington is ANY LIE THAT WORKS…..and if it provides deniability all the better….
Hatch said the piece falsely depicted lawmakers as “in the pocket of the drug industry.”
What’s WRONG?? Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., two of the other sponsors of the legislation, received…… $5,000 each ?????
>>. D. Linden Barber, a former DEA official-turned industry lobbyist
drafted legislation that was given to Rep. Tom Marino, R-Penn.
>< in response to the story, Marino removed himself from consideration as the next federal drug czar
Not only does the story provide robust evidence that pharmaceutical supply companies were involved in every step of the legislative process — with a drug lobbyist even ghostwriting the original bill ……Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Hatch said the piece falsely depicted lawmakers as “in the pocket of the drug industry.”
POLICY OF ANY LIE THAT WORKS. . .
WE the PEOPLE – – – FOR the PEOPLE – – – BY the PEOPLE …
ANY LIE THAT WORKS….Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
$.$.$.$.$.$.$.$.$.$ H O N E S T – G O V E R N M E N T ?.?.?.?
not adult to resign $.$.$.$ sworn to represent the people (WHICH PEOPLE – those who pay the highest??)
Joshua88, it is hard to overdose if one is doing fairly steady amounts of opioids. However 95 % of these opioids are laced with with the potent liver toxin Tylenol. One does not get resistant to that poison. So that can and does kill as opioid doses are increased by users exceeding prescription amounts and the anti opioid neoliberals will never define how many deaths arise from this largely ineffective additive since it does not fit their agenda. As I said their focus is on creating a wedge issue for political gain. This is not about concern for the public.
You are right regarding Tylenol and it’s deadly properties. You could not be more incorrect about OD’ing on opiates being hard. Oxy has no Tylenol and kills by the thousands. Opiates target the brainstem, stopping the person from breathing. Tylenol overdose is treated by administering “charcoal”in 17 doses to absorb the Tylenol. This kind of misinformation can kill.
Lie. Tylenol od is treated by administering “charcoal” and you live. Opiate od attacks the brainstem and the person stops breathing. Either you are a pharma scum or sorely misinformed.
Judging by the level of astroturfing on this thread, I’d say The Intercept should feel flattered that drug companies care so much about burying its reporting in clouds of wandering tirades and unverifiable anecdotes.
Anyone who has read the bills, followed the progress for decades and *isn’t* being paid. that U.S. pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, corrupt politicians and the corporate cheerleading squad we call the FDA are responsible for the opiod crisis.
Play the theme music of outrage all you like. We’re not fooled for one moment by phony testimonies and non sequitur rants about corrupt democrats.
The issue is pharmaceutical manipulation of the law. The precedent is vast. The evidence is damning.
Erratum:
Anyone who has read the bills, followed the progress for decades and *isn’t* being paid knows that U.S. pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, corrupt politicians and the corporate cheerleading squad we call the FDA are responsible for the opiod crisis.
Such an astute observation Yore!!!!!! Of course people who have been victims of of this witch hunt on legal medication that never did anything wrong would never speak out and suffer in silence while their only effective medication is being pulled away from them. Empathy is clearly lacking for chronic pain patients, but that is nothing new.
I have primary generalized dystonia and developed arachnoiditis as a result of damage to my spinal cord during surgery to implant an intrathecal pump catheter. I was a registered nurse prior to being in a wheelchair. I work hard to ensure that? patients who have functional benefit from opioids are able to continue a treatment that is effective for them as individual. I DO NOT HAVE ANY DIGITAL FINGER PRINTS THAT BELONG TO LOBBYISTS FOR PHARMA ANYWHERE ON MY BODY! Neither do any of the other patients who I know. PROP gets money from Steve Rummler Hope Network.
We DON’T p have wealthy supporters like they’re do. We are being repeatedly stomped on by PROP and others
Funny isn’t Anne???? First chronic pain patients are labeled as drug seekers, drug dealers and at times fakes over the years. Now if we speak out against being purged by doctors due to no fault of our own we are now labeled Big Pharma propagandists….. we did not start this problem yet we are the ones who will pay.
It is interesting how deep seated the bias is in Christian USA that glorifies and admires pain and suffering. That Jesus suffered torture to “save” us is not unrelated.
We have to navigate between two extremes here.
To begin with, I trust all of us, being cleverer than average, understand that the War on Drugs is stupid. People should be free to make, sell, and purchase raw opium, morphine, or heroin, so obviously, we cannot support any scheme of tight legal restrictions on drug sales.
That said, we also have to recognize the traditional “we just invented a brand new non-addictive opiate and we have the patent and you can buy it from us right now…” flim-flam game is not legitimate. First morphine was supposed to purify the pain relief from the nasty addictive opium, then it was heroin, then there were a few others I forget, and finally there was Oxycontin, sold the exact same way with the exact same outcome. Purdue Pharma pushed that drug and got patients addicted by doctors who should have known better (but found greed and guillibility taste nice together).
At this point the reform we should embrace is getting addicts into treatment, no matter how they were addicted, and working to educate against drug abuse rather than prohibiting our way out of it. But the reform we’re going to get is that the companies will keep “evergreening” ways of selling non-addictive opiates, special time release formula, extra tamper proof packaging, maybe they’ll install one of those electronic bugs to track the patients as they walk around and call it a “security measure”. They’ll keep filing patents with later and later dates and Congress will keep rewarding them, all in the name of cracking down against them. It’s a little like the tobacco companies that the states have punished by setting minimum allowable prices, like they did with milk back when they wanted to keep the producers from going out of business. All very profitable, but not much related to anything useful.
I find it difficult to track the idea of this entire “epidemic.”
First of all, if this many people are overdosing – let us REMEMBER that we don’t know how many deaths are straight opioids or cocktails, plus alcohol, or whatever – this is a far more serious problem than described in the coverage.
It’s hard to overdose when you have been taking drugs for a long time, unless you are buying street drugs of an unknown provenance – this isn’t that.
If people are killing themselves with such ease through opioids, we have a social problem, not a medical problem. Not an addiction problem.
All things being equal – and of course, they are not, people who have real physical pain are left finding it difficult to be properly medicated, let alone get access to pain meds.
Legalize drugs and treat addiction as a disease. And absolutely do not let bureaucrats and politicians tell physicians what they can and can not prescribe. This I would think is common sense. But this is about Dems looking for a wedge issues to run campaigns against Repugs. Since they can not run on more important issues such as reigning in the MIC, stopping Banksters, stopping TPP corporate rape, stopping police brutality, and Medicare for all (although they may fake this last one) since would upset their big corporate sponsers, they have launched this media campaign through their “journalist” connections. So what you get in this “democracy” is this kind of war on drugs, law and order, keep us safe from the terrorist, “throw them a carrot” BS issue.
Can the author explain how CVS can order too many “opioids” since they only fill doctor’s prescriptions? That would seem to indicate that the Guberment / DEA is already interfering with the doctor-patient relationship?
And to add further emphasize the chutzpah of these journalist, they have the gall to accuse pain suffering patient of being in bed with greedy drug companies, when the Democrats are completely sold out and in bed with a whole host of worse sleaze. A case in point is dangerous war monger Diane Feinstein jumping on the “opioid crisis” bandwagon.
http://bit.ly/2gxC0mJ
Not only that her and Mikulski added CDC “Recommendations” to VA funding Bill that is now causing our nation’s finest to commit suicide due to intolerable pain. It was Blackmail! This is all a national disgrace! Vet’s bodies have been subjected to some of the worst Trauma imaginable not to mention loss of multiple limbs. These so called “Progressive” Senators “playing Doctor” make me ill and need to stay out of our medicine!
BUT Ronald Reagan paid for the arms for HOSTAGES with the drug money he got from the C.I.A.
Iran/Contras – drugs from Central America Cocaine converted to crack/cocaine and sold in L.A. (sorry no one says who was selling the drugs) Full Senate investigation -report was not classified…….
arms for hostages against our own laws –
smuggling and illegal drug distribution –
BUT 16 years in the GOLDEN TRIANGLE – POPPY CULTIVATION – increases every year
so it wasn’t oil – Afghanistan – Iraq – Pakistan …….golden triangle
The power struggle between the CIA/DEA and Big Pharma to control the supply of addictive drugs to the American market, continues. The winner in this war is the American consumer who has access to a broader range of illicit drugs than ever before. It is true that getting more of what you want sometimes has negative consequences. But that is true of everything – not just drugs.
this makes me sick to my stomach. The Intercept is always known for the truth up until the past year. Glen , WHERE ARE YOU?! This hit piece against chronic and acute pain patients ( chronic pain, acute pain from ER or severe emergency, cancer patients, post surgical patients) who only have a 2% addiction rate, are NOT the cause of the HEROIN OD crisis. All the evidence is the opposite of the Manufactured Consent creating this witch hunt on safe FDA approved opioids. Please for GODS sake, talk to chronic pain patients and doctors who help over 100 MILLION Americans who are injured and NOT addicted talk to you. People are committing suicide or dying from pain related organ failure from REFUSAL by Drs to treat chronic or acute pain.
There is an old time-tested rule among drug dealers, “DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY”. This rule would go well for the elected whores in congress who get high on their own supply of propagandist bullshet. However their li’l mini-self-esteem thingies that stir and foment in their whale size egos do not combine in such a fashion to see the wisdom of that. The biggest feeder for these egoistic whores is israel as we now see as the treasonly write laws against the right of protest and the American way as is evidenced by ITEM 11 in the federal disaster relief “contracts” that they unAmericanly force upon victims of disasters.
Similarly, whores like Horin Hatchit get their ego food from the criminals running the American pharmaceutical drug cartel where they push dangerous drugs like STATIN onto the public.
The pattern of exterminating Americans with dangerous takem-for-life pills, robbing Americans of low prices and affordable habitat and life support, and killing Americans in war fraud is becoming very blatantly in your face. Who is to say that these crazies arent also committing a alt-palestinian genocide of the American middle class with the poisoning of soil and water supply with heavy metals with chemtrails? You would think that when they rant on tv sunday interviews, their ugliness of their posture, expression, phrasing and facial looks would in someway alert themselves to the crap they serve. But these losers are so high on their own supply, ugliness is not a quality they recognize.
Note that all this happened under the Obama administration and it is his signature at the bottom of the law. It was his DOJ that put pressure on the DEA agents in charge of pharmaceutical distribution oversight to back off. Can’t blame this one on Liddle Donnie Daycare though he is carrying on the legacy. Want more proof that the war on drugs is pure, unbridled white supremacy in action?
You obviously missed the 60 Minutes piece.
The Republicans who controlled both houses in Congress made this happen because their biggest campaign contributors wanted it.
Obama signed the bill because there were no objections from Congress or the DOJ.
We’re actually all to blame for it. We don’t pay enough attention to what Congress is up to.
POLITICIAN – TO DISGRACED POLITICIAN – TO LOBBYIST…..after all one hand washes the other..
I had the tip of my finger amputated – prescription for Oxycontin…… I’ll say this GARBAGE – and you can not flush it down the toilet—-and I’m to cheap to give it back – so every three of four days I took one a night…AND I DO MEAN GARBAGE
Citizens United is a godsend to hiding political contributions and a bear when trying to follow a money trail……
YET within seconds they know the Russians paid for political advertisements on Facebook?? There were 16 people running to be the Republican candidate for the presidency –
but not one word of where that much money came from??
CITIZENS???
united???
NO ANSWERS !
Far too many people were givien prescriptions for opioids under false pretense of “pain”. These companies knowingly addicted thousands of people condemning them and society to the consequences.
One of those consequences is the inevitable overreaction where people writhing in terminal pain are condemned to suffer until the day of their death. Then we can all applaud our virtue together.
It would be nice if America would become a nation of grownups for a change.
Pain relief for the dying but if you have chronic unrelenting pain and it only kills you slowly you must suffer for years and years without relief. Makes a hell of a lot of sense and is a very “mature” approach…… SMH!!!!!
Since the owners began working on the debt side of the ledger, these transnational monopolists have advanced neoliberalism with traitorous policies to hobble the nation for a corporate takeover. Nations are being turned into colonies populated with bondservants.
The drug war is a hoax, and I have no intention of asking ‘my’ government for incremental change while this fake war serves as a feeder system for mass incarceration that transforms surplus labor into convict labor while hiding the real extent of unemployment.
I agree with Orale, just legalize drugs in accordance with social libertarians such as the Drug Policy Alliance. This is far more responsible than proposals by market libertarians who want to commercialize drugs. This war is a greater un-American activity than any red scare. A war that promotes epidemical availability from which our government knowingly enslaves and kills its own.
The root cause of this opiate onslaught is criminogenic drug prohibition from which profit motives engender black markets that spread opiates. Law enforcement then elevates profit margins by serving as nothing more than a government price support system for gangster narco-crops.
Whether a corporate drug cartel or an illegal drug cartel, street thugs and suite thugs seek regular consumers navigated by addiction. Only a moral imbecile would believe corporate traffickers are any less ruthless than other organized mobsters.
Well said, all around. Of course, we are dealing with a government that poisoned 10,000 of its own citizens to death during Prohibition by leaving alcohol spiked with poison lying around to be found. The beauty of gold-plated Puritanism is that the rights of the elect always require dangerous natives hiding in the woods. “Bondservants” indeed.
A 2007 proposal from the European Senlis Council to license Afghan farmers to produce opium for the world pharmaceutical market, and thereby solve another problem, that of chronic under use of potent analgesics where required within developing nations. Part of the proposal is to overcome the “80–20 rule” that requires the U.S. to purchase 80 percent of its legal opium from India and Turkey to include Afghanistan, by establishing a second-tier system of supply control that complements the current INCB regulated supply and demand system by providing poppy-based medicines to countries who cannot meet their demand under the current regulations. Senlis arranged a conference in Kabul that brought drug policy experts from around the world to meet with Afghan government officials to discuss internal security, corruption issues, and legal issues within Afghanistan. In June 2007, the Council launched a “Poppy for Medicines” project that provides a technical blueprint for the implementation of an integrated control system within Afghan village-based poppy for medicine projects: the idea promotes the economic diversification by redirecting proceeds from the legal cultivation of poppy and production of poppy-based medicines (See Senlis Council). There has been criticism of the Senlis report findings by Macfarlan Smith, who argue that though they produce morphine in Europe, they were never asked to contribute to the report. DC groups like ICOS endorsed this as well as William Patey, British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012.
With the surge in poppy growth in Afghanistan it looks like the CIA & Big Pharma by passed the middlemen. This raises once again the issue of corruption. Indeed, since many government officials personally benefit from the illicit drug trade, we could expect them to strongly oppose drug legalization.
http://www.icosgroup.net/2007/report/countering-the-insurgency-press/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/weekinreview/14mcneil.html
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/11/27/the-drug-trade-in-afghanistan-understanding-motives-behind-farmers-decision-to-cultivate-opium-poppies/
Legalize all drugs….problem solved.
For once we agree on something.
Good…I bet we agree on more. The internet isn’t the best medium for good conversation.
They built the great wall of China at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, many years and huge investment in resources only to have it fail at it’s weakest link, gatekeepers. The wall was only effective as long as the gatekeepers were loyal. America’s number one problem with government is the same as the great wall of China…Our gatekeepers are for sale. Allowing our gatekeepers to sell us out will be our downfall.
Finally at least the firefighters know how to do the reanimation…
Medical staff prefers to trust in Mindfullness Based Stress Reduction and … full responsibility for yourself starting from the earliest warning signals of pain up to the last and most intensive signals of pain before death.
“Gate control theory of pain argues that human thoughts, beliefs and emotions affect the amount of pain felt from a given physical sensation. The basis of this theory is that both the psychological and physical factors guide the brain’s interpretation of painful sensations and subsequent response.”
http://www.physiotherapy-treatment.com/gate-control-theory-of-pain.html
Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore Comedy Show has it right. Congress is NOT working for us. The government is NOT our friend.
We need a revolution, people in the streets. Not led by the “Resistance” which is a half baked Democrat attempt to take over the energy of fed up people to co-opt them into the Dems’ corrupt political party.
Our government is killing us, sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly via police and executions in the streets.
We live in a two party system. Weakening the Democratic Party works against your interests.
You left out “we need a revolution.” The two-party system is a ring of hell. The living have no need for it.
Jimmy Dore for president! :p
Excellent political commentary from that guy. He’s like an everyman’s Chomsky.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00009869
Orin, Orin, Orin..do you just not give a shit and say what you say? My gawd man, ever heard of the internet?
From 2013-18, 5 years the #1 top Industry to contribute to your livelihood, was and is..the Pharmaceutical Industry
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $583,009 total, $239,109 from individuals, $343,900 from PAC’s
Liar!
It looks like the surveillance state bit the hand that fed it that time! But I doubt that will be enough to get the legislators to think twice about spending huge sums on spying on Americans, or even to get businessmen to just wonder a moment about why the software they use is always set up to spread large amounts of information they didn’t request it to.
P. S. Your photo looks like it is a little past its expiration date! I mean, 01/05??? Get yourselves a better file photo, you deserve it.
Yeah, really, what’s the matter with you, you darn traitor?
Trump = bad
Democrats = good
Criticism of Republicans = Truth
Criticism of Democrats = Russian Fake News
Bipartisan wrongdoing = HTTP 404 Not Found Error
[Great reporting. lolmetada]
Merchants of Death: The pharmaceuticals, Congress and the US opioid epidemic
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/19/opio-o19.html
HEY, the best legislation money can buy is what the U.S. Congress does.
What’re you anyway, Russian? ;)
HEY, HEY going one up on you
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Movie
Investigative Journalist wrote a book with this title a few years ago. He made a movie and the trailer can be found on this link.
Major focus is on voting and Kris Kobach the election rigging chief culprit
“Palast is exactly what a journalist is supposed to be – a truth hound, doggedly independent, undaunted by power. His stories bite. They’re so relevant they threaten to alter history.”
Chicago Tribune