The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) allowed drug
makers to increase production of opioids even as overdose deaths were
skyrocketing, according to a government watchdog’s scathing report
released Tuesday.
While opioid overdose deaths grew by 8 percent per year
from 1999 through 2013, and by 71 percent per year between 2013 and
2017, the DEA authorized manufacturers to produce “substantially larger
amounts of opioids,” reads the report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
The DEA was “slow” to address the opioid epidemic and
did not substantially reduce the number of pills drug makers were
permitted to make until 2017, the same year overdose deaths hit a record
high, the report says.
“We found that DEA was slow to respond to this growing
public health crisis and that its regulatory and enforcement efforts
could have been more effective,” said Inspector General Michael Horowitz
in a video statement.
The report comes as health officials and state and
federal governments look to hold accountable entities that spurned the
epidemic, which killed about 400,000 people between 1999 and 2017.
State and local governments have filed hundreds of
lawsuits against drug manufacturers and distributors that they argue
knowingly caused the epidemic by understating the addictive properties
of opioids.
But the report issued Tuesday indicates the federal
government also played a role. The DEA, which is charged with keeping
controlled substances from being diverted for abuse, had already
been criticized by advocates for not using its powers to curb the opioid
epidemic.
“Every aspect of the pharmaceutical supply chain bears
responsibility for the havoc and senseless death unleashed upon West
Virginia – and the DEA is no exception,” said West Virginia Attorney
General Patrick Morrisey, who sued the DEA over its quota system.
“For years, the DEA was grossly negligent in its
mismanagement of the national drug quota system. Unfortunately, this
mismanagement contributed to the senseless death of many Americans.”
Every year, the DEA sets a quota for how many opioid pills drugmakers are allowed to produce in the U.S.
The DEA permitted drugmakers to increase their
production of oxycodone, a highly addictive painkiller, by 400 percent
between 2002 and 2013, according to the report.
The DEA didn’t substantially cut the quota until 2017,
when opioid overdose deaths reached a peak in the U.S., according to the
report.
That year, the DEA cut the quota by 25 percent, and a record-high 48,000 people died from opioid overdoses.
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