Opioid epidemic blamed on corruption

UNITED STATES: A cabal of congressmen and drugs companies is alleged to have helped fuel an epidemic of opioid abuse in America by neutering efforts to stop suspicious shipments of painkillers reaching rogue doctors and chemists.

More than 64,000 overdose deaths were recorded last year in the US, a 22 per cent increase on 2015. An average of 175 people a day died from drug abuse, more than shootings and car crashes combined.

Yet even as the opioid crisis became a talking point in the race for the White House, Congress passed a bill last year that hindered the ability of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to halt shipments of prescription painkillers that its investigators suspect are destined for the black market.

One of the champions of the bill was Tom Marino, a member of Congress who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to be the new White House ‘‘drugs tsar’’. Marino presented the new law as a means of safeguarding access to essential medication.

Joe Rannazzisi, a former head of the DEA division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry, disagrees. He claims that the legislation was the culmination of years of effort to block the department from thwarting the flow of opioids to addicts.

The drugs industry spent more than US$100 million lobbying Capitol Hill between 2014 and 2016, and key members of Congress, including Marino, received sixfigure contributions.

Rannazzisi, who retired in 2015, alleges that the money has bought unprecedented influence and that companies have been able to bully the Justice Department, which oversees the DEA, into shelving investigations into suspicious opioid supplies. ‘‘The drug industry, the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and chain drug stores, have an influence over Congress that has never been seen before,’’ Rannazzisi told The Washington Post. ‘‘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.’’

Marino’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rannazzisi described to 60 Minutes, a TV news programme, how he decided while at the DEA to place less emphasis on prosecuting individual rogue clinics, pharmacists and doctors and to target big suppliers instead.

He alleges, however, that in 2011, Cardinal Health, America’s second largest drug distributor, put pressure on his superiors at the Justice Department. The former deputy attorney general James Cole has denied that pressure was put on his superiors.