DEA ripped for failing to stop drug companies' flood of opioids into WV

[Tanuki]

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/wv_drug_abuse/dea-ripped-for-failing-to-stop-drug-firms-from-flooding/article_722918e0-6167-55e1-8ec1-438072aed9eb.html

"Federal lawmakers railed against the Drug Enforcement Administration Tuesday for failing to stop prescription drug distributors from shipping tens of millions of opioid painkillers to small-town pharmacies in Southern West Virginia.

Members of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee demanded to know why the DEA didn’t act while the drug companies supplied more than 20 million pain pills to pharmacies in towns with fewer than 3,000 people — places like Williamson and Mount Gay.

“We spend billions of dollars, countless hours by law enforcement, trying to stop illegal drugs from coming into this country, and here we are sending millions of doses of opioids to tiny little towns in West Virginia, all of this supposedly legally,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., at Tuesday’s congressional hearing. “This has to stop. This has to stop now.”

Drug distributors showered West Virginia with more than 780 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — over six years, data shows. The oversupply is widely blamed with starting the opioid crisis that’s causing record numbers of drug overdose deaths across the state.

The House panel’s investigation has targeted large drug wholesalers such as McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, and regional distributors Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith.
.........

The panel has previously sparred with the DEA, after the agency refused to turn over documents and submitted reports that were heavily redacted or blacked out.".....(more)

[democratisphere]

1. Profits are always more important than people's lives.

The American Criminal Enterprise Healthcare System forges on.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Not ripped enough-- if they are not doing the job they have, Congress can replace it...

with an agency that will.

[Blues Heron]

3. They write like the drug manufacturers

just took it upon themselves to send crates of pills, unasked, to the hapless folk of West Virginia.


Drug distributors showered West Virginia with more than 780 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — over six years, data shows. The oversupply is widely blamed

[Docreed2003]

4. The reason they shipped so many pills was because of the demand

It's not like someone was shipping millions of pills to these small towns for no reason. They were shipped to this town because of the incredible demand. Yes, pharmaceutical companies need to be held responsible for their marketing tactics, yes the DEA should have been more vigilant in seeing the massive flow of these pills, but none of that answer the question of the elephant in the room. Why are rural communities in WV and other rural areas so susceptible to these drugs?

[Tavarious Jackson]

5. +1

[ProfessorGAC]

6. My Doctor Told Me. . .

. . .that the pharmacies in those small towns were then surreptitiously moving those drugs to states where the enforcement agencies there more closely scrutinized the purchases and shipments. (Florida was one of them.)
He got the information through his hospital administration because they wanted every doctor to be aware of this type of behavior, and that IL is one of those states that watches those things. So, high volume of prescriptions, beyond what the state regulators could track with direct purchases from the drug manufacturers would raise red flags.

Of course, my doctor is my wife's doctor and she is on pain meds, so that just creates another bump for the people the doctors are really trying to help.

[Docreed2003]

7. Interesting...

I would highly recommend the book "Dreamland" about this epidemic. It touches on some of that and other reasons for where we are currently.

[Tanuki]

11. Interesting that you mention Florida....they were notorious for "pill mills"

that but cracked down a few years ago. There was widespread drug trafficking, Medicare fraud, money laundering, as well as the tragic human toll of addiction and death by overdose.

For more, just Google "Florida pill mills"

[ProfessorGAC]

12. They Must Have Found This. . .

. . .as a way around that crackdown you mention. My MD said the memo specifically mentioned FL, and "others". FL was the only state mentioned by name as the destination of the secondary shipments.

Kind of fits in with your description.

[Tanuki]

13. The crackdown...2011....

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.bradenton.com/news/local/article34509807.html
..."Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to drop his opposition to a prescription drug monitoring database drew plaudits Thursday from Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, who had personally urged Scott to change his mind.

Scott and Beshear -- whose states bookend what’s known as the “pill mill pipeline” -- testified before a House committee on the destructive underground prescription drug network that flourishes in Florida, and is “destroying lives” in Kentucky, Beshear said.

.....

The southern governors, along with the Obama administration’s drug czar and victims and survivors of pain pill abuse, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that over the past decade, the selling and abuse of prescription drugs, especially what’s known as “hillbilly heroin,” or OxyContin, has grown to epic levels. The problem is now so entrenched that the cheap flights and van rentals drug traffickers use to travel from Florida, with its looser laws on pill distribution, to Kentucky and other states are nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.”
.....
Scott acknowledged a “serious problem,” noting that 98 of the top 100 doctors in the country dispensing oxycodone are in Florida, mostly in Miami, Tampa and Orlando.

“More is dispensed in Florida than the rest of the country combined,” Scott told the panel."... (more)

[Lee-Lee]

9. Here is what I have seen

The higher your rates of people on some form of disability and Medicaid and also in poverty the more susceptible a poor area like this is to prescription pain killer abuse

First, because being on disability opens the door. One only has to claim new pain or new/exaggerated symptoms to get access to them legally and at no cost.

That makes it so easy it’s almost a matter of routine. The people doing it all talk to each other and they all know what doctors will prescribe for what symptoms you give them.

Some do it just to get them for recreational use. Because you can’t get the doctor to prescribe a case of beer for Saturday night, but you can get some pills by faking pain.

Some are addicts.

And some do it just to sell them. Because if you are in poverty and on disability if you can get the doctor to give you a prescription you can turn around and sell for $300-500 a month that’s a lot of money you don’t have to do much for..

I think the last one is a lot of that. Probably 2/3 of the people prescribed don’t even use them, they just need the money and sell them. That’s where that steady supply for the black market comes from.

One approach that should be tried, I think, is to find the people most likely to be in that category of ones who don’t really need it and just get them to resell and offer them cash payments every month in place of ten prescription. They get the money they desperately need and more opiates don’t get into the black market.

[Docreed2003]

10. Excellent points

I've seen that in my practice as well. As a specialist that prescibes opiates in what I do, our practice is very frank with patients about the fact that we don't prescribe opiates preoperatively and patients get one script postop. This is all in an attempt to comply with state regulations. For the most part, this has been positive, I've become much more educated in nonopiate forms of pain control, but some patients, a small minority, don't like it...I had a patient storm out of my office this week because I wouldn't prescribe pain meds for a non surgical problem. That's the world we are practicing in now.

[safeinOhio]

8. Good place to start that

death penalty thingy.