Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress - CBS News
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Whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi says drug distributors pumped opioids into U.S. communities — knowing that people were dying — and says industry lobbyists and Congress derailed the DEA’s efforts to stop it
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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
Tom Marino a été proposé par Trump pour devenir le “drug czar” de la la Maison Blanche... mais il a du se retirer suite à cette émission.
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.