Mediaboss Marketing

Last month, the nonpartisan Department of Justice inspector general released the findings of his investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administrations regulation of the ever-growing opioid crisis from 2010 to 2017.

The inspector general reported that the DEAs Office of Diversion Control exacerbated the opioid crisis by failing many of its most basic functions to create and enforce regulations to protect the public interest against the diversion and misuse of prescription opioid pain killers.

The Controlled Substances Act vests nearly all federal power to regulate opioids in the U.S. Department of Justice, under which the Office of Diversion Control is responsible for setting annual production and manufacturing quotas. It issues licenses (called registrations) for manufacturers, distributors, prescribers, and pharmacists, and it has the power and responsibility to deny applications or revoke registrations that are not in the public interest."

During the 2018 election cycle, Democrats railed against everyone in the supply chain, except the people vested with national authority to make the changes needed. And since the release of the inspector generals report, their silence is deafening. The regulation of prescription opioids during the eight years under President Obama is the elephant in the room that the mainstream media and lawmakers are talking over, under, and around. But the inspector general has laid it all out for us to see and use as a roadmap back to safe and sane regulation of much-needed pain-relief medicine and a reduction in overdose deaths and addiction.

The inspector general revealed that from 2003 through 2013, the DEAs Office of Diversion Control approved increasing the aggregate production quota for opioids by more than 400%. The Office of Diversion Control also increased active registrants to 1.6 million from 2005 to 2015, an increase of 45%. Meanwhile, from 2013 to 2017, opioid deaths rose by 71% all while the DEA kept increasing the allowable flow of the drug in the marketplace.

The inspector general reported that the Office of Diversion Control did not conduct background checks or otherwise check-out applicants properly. In essence, the Office of Diversion Control was rubber-stamping registrations to produce, deliver, prescribe, and sell opioids without performing even simple background checks or going beyond applicants' affirmations, via checkbox, that they lacked criminal records.

Registrants are required to submit suspicious orders to the Office of Diversion Control; the purpose of those reports is to identify rogue doctors and pharmacies that may be overprescribing opioids. The reports are supposed to be housed in the Suspicious Order Reporting System, which was not even created until 2008. Unfortunately, that system was unable to properly detect drug diversion because most of the reports were sent to DEA field offices and never uploaded to the database. This is how, of the 1,400 manufacturers and distributors required to submit suspicious order reports, the DEA database only included reports from the eight manufacturers and distributors that had agreements to send the reports to DEA headquarters. Amazingly, when the inspector general asked for the reports that had not been uploaded, the field offices were unable to locate them.

So although several drug distributors ended up footing a $260 million bill for the economic burden that two Ohio counties suffered from the opioid crisis, the actions and inactions of the last administration are what really put the opioid crisis into overdrive.

The real power of a congressional investigation and hearings is to make real policy changes that can make life better for everyday Americans. This is one such opportunity. Congress owes it to its constituents to immediately begin an investigation into how the previous administrations Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration utterly failed to take even the most basic steps to stop the opioid crisis in its tracks.

Ian Prior iis former principal deputy director of public affairs at the Department of Justice.

See original here:
The Obama administration's overlooked failure on opioids - Washington Examiner