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Congress has responded strongly to a joint investigation by CBS and The Washington Post (archive) about Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) employees becoming lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, and the passage of a bill in 2016 hobbling the DEA's ability to go after opioid distributors and suspicious drug sales:
Lawmakers and the Drug Enforcement Administration are facing tough questions following an explosive joint investigation by "60 Minutes" and The Washington Post that says Congress helped disarm the DEA.
Drug overdose deaths in the United States have more than doubled over the past decade. The CDC says 188,000 people have died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2015.
Joe Rannazzisi used to run the DEA's diversion control. He told "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker that the opioid crisis was aided in part by Congress, lobbyists and the drug distribution industry. The DEA says it has taken actions against far fewer opioid distributors under a new law. A Justice Department memo shows 65 doctors, pharmacies and drug companies received suspension orders in 2011. Only six of them have gotten them this year.
[...] [The] DEA's efforts may have been undermined by the so-called "revolving door" culture in Washington. At least 46 investigators, attorneys and supervisors from the DEA, including 32 directly from the division that regulates the drug industry, have been hired by the pharmaceutical industry since the scrutiny on distributors began.
From The Washington Post:
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump's nominee to become the nation's next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.
For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales. The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA's chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.
Political action committees representing the industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill, including nearly $100,000 to Marino and $177,000 to Hatch. Overall, the drug industry spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016, according to lobbying reports.
President Trump said he would "look into" the reports about Tom Marino, his pick for "drug czar" (the actual name of the position is the Director of National Drug Control Policy).
Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?
Update: Tom Marino, Trump's Pick As Drug Czar, Withdraws After Damaging Opioid Report
Previously:
President Trump Declares the Opioid Crisis a National Emergency
Study Finds Stark Increase in Opioid-Related Admissions, Deaths in Nation's ICUs
CVS Limits Opioid Prescriptions
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @06:19AM (8 children)
I'll consider supporting the "re-arming" of the DEA when anyone can show me the authority given to the federal government to give to the DEA to ban/restrict/prohibit possession/use/commerce involving any sort of plant or drug. (For simplicity's sake, let's start with substances grown and used within the same State, to fend off the "if it's interstate commerce, it's bannable!" folk.)
If it turns out that the DEA has no authority to kidnap people, steal their possession, and throw them in cages... what would we then call DEA agents' activity? Is there a simple word to describe the actions they take without legitimate authority?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by stormreaver on Tuesday October 17 2017, @11:52AM (5 children)
I'm not going to debate this in subsequent postings, since I already know you've made up your mind; and no facts will ever change it. But the end of Article 1, Section 8 is the authority you seek:
Congress has the power to make any law that does not conflict with the Constitution. Although they frequently make stupid laws, the Constitution grants them the power to do so. That power includes making laws that establish Federal agencies, and the power to destroy those same Federal agencies.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday October 17 2017, @12:18PM
"All Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, " != "any law that does not conflict with the Constitution," the reason they call this the elastic clause is because some folks like to stretch the semantics of it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Virindi on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:06PM
The text you quoted does not say anything like your interpretation. Let's examine the text and determine the modern English meaning.
This part is pretty easy. "Laws needed".
A modifier for "laws needed", those needed in the "execution". What is execution? It is close to a synonym for "enforcement". It is the action of the government which compels those laws to be followed, the action which brings about the result directed by those laws. "Executing" a law is to cause it to have effect in the world. This is the same meaning that applies to the "Executive" Branch.
Okay! What can they execute?
Webster defines "foregoing" as: "listed, mentioned, or occurring before". The powers mentioned previously in the text of the Constitution. Typically in laws, this type of statement applies to things in the same section. Whether it applies to this section only or the entire previous text is immaterial here. We will assume it means the entire previous text for simplicity.
So not only the powers previously mentioned, but additionally, all powers given by the Constitution.
...to the federal government.
Okay, we're done. Here's what we have:
"The Congress shall have power to make"..."laws needed" "to enforce" "powers previously listed" "and all other powers listed in the Constitution" "which are given to the federal government".
You said:
But this is not so, they only have the power to make laws which enforce previously listed and otherwise granted powers, not just anything nonconflicting.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:14PM
The problem is that these laws conflict with the Constitution, particularly civil asset forfeiture laws.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:02PM
Please show me where the Constitution grants the power to Congress to regulate what substances we can put into our bodies.
It took an amendment to the Constitution to ban alcohol. Now, because the Supreme Court re-wrote the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn and subsequent cases, apparently Congress can do this.
But that doesn't make the decision correct. If Republicans and "Originalists" had any integrity, they would acknowledge that the word "affects" does not appear in the Commerce Clause and that Wickard v. Filburn and all the decisions that follow it were wrongly decided.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 17 2017, @07:02PM
I can tell you're a very smart cookie. Have you thought about becoming a judge? I need a lot, a lot of judges in my federal courts. #MAGA 🇺🇸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @03:59PM (1 child)
Yes. Illegal is the word you're looking for.
Men aren't angels, so they decided to voluntarily give up some of their natural sovereignty to a central body that was had an enumeration of specific powers it was granted. At least that's how the myth goes.
But yet, and this is the kicker! Holy shit men aren't angels. Nobody challenged the gradual usurpation of more and more of their sovereignty, the overreach by this central body. Additionally, they did not include some means, such as a coming-of-age ritual, whereby new humans gain their sovereignty and become adults, that new humans may then each, on and individual basis, voluntarily consent to relinquishing their newly obtained sovereignty as a consequence of the coming of age!
So it goes. Even if we consider that all of us who were violently imposed upon may yet be willing to voluntarily and partially relinquish the inherent sovereignty that nature's goddess gave us when we were created, the written agreement, this "Constitution," does not grant this body any power whatsoever to create a legal construction called contraband!
The whole thing is a farce, and I can confirm that the system, as it is found in 2017 CE, constitutes nothing more than a violently imposed monopoly.
Here my beef with anarcho-capitalism was that it cannot function so long as men have not yet become angels. What I didn't expect was that men are nothing more than talking animals.
Anarcho-capitalism cannot function with talking animals, either. So I don't know where that leaves us. Expect 100,000 more years of tribal war, technological ascents, descents into dark ages, lost technologies that are indistinguishable from magic, wars, slavery, and lots of poo-flinging.
The thing that really depresses me is that there's no guarantee that in 100,000 years men will have evolved into angels. Evolution doesn't work that way.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:24AM
Well at least you see the problem. Broadly, I see two solutions. I'll address the scarier one first.
1) The talking animals could become "angels," through augmentation or genetic meddling. I can imagine a future where people are engineered to be benevolent -- given a true democracy with less hawks than doves, I expect the that the doves will vote the hawks into obsolescence once they have the ability and see the problem clearly. Maybe this never comes to pass (why would the hawks want the doves to have a true democracy?), but let's assume for a moment that it does; the kicker is that this has to be done globally, or else there will be some hawks somewhere still trying to compete with the doves. There must be some interim moment where men are still not angels, and they are given absolute authority over all mankind. This moment may never end.
2) We could accept some of the horrors anarcho-capitalism, which is really just tribal warfare taken to its natural conclusion, which is really just evolution taken to its natural conclusion, which is really just thermodynamics taken to its natural conclusion, and develop protocols which incentivise more dovish behavior on the part of hawks. Mutually assured destruction is one such protocol -- it is understood that any group capable of destroying the world cannot be directly attacked. Bitcoin is another such protocol -- if decentralised money is information then it can be destroyed at will, and the physical capture of an opponents stronghold becomes less desirable than if that stronghold contains a stockpile of gold. I can imagine a future where distributed uranium enrichment, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, and cheap energy/food production make war with any surviving societies intolerable and embargoes practically useless. There would still be horrible, horrible things happening. There would be crazy cults and sadistic torturers, but there would also be free societies doing something totally different. The only way to stop all of the bad shit is to play world police.
So it goes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @06:38AM
Government by the money, for the money, of the money. In lobbyists we trust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 17 2017, @06:48AM (3 children)
Is Congress a character in a youtube video now? Makes sense, I guess. What wild and crazy thing will Donald do next? How will congress react? Well, I hope with Articles of Impeachment. Donald, you're fired. And appropriate end to a Reality Show.
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 17 2017, @07:56AM
We're going to be looking into it. Believe me, we'll look into it. This country and, frankly, the world has a drug problem, a massive problem. So I want to get this absolutely right. We’re going to do something about it. Tom was a very early supporter of mine, a great guy. Loyal. But he did introduce the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016. He introduced it. And a lot, a lot of Congressmen voted for it. On both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And the president signed it. Not President Donald J. Trump. President Barack Hussein Obama. Your president. But nobody impeached him. So I inherited a mess. Which I'll need at least two terms to fix. Probably two and a half, to be perfectly honest with you. #MAGA #TRUMP2020 #RepealThe22nd 🇺🇸
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday October 17 2017, @10:18AM (1 child)
No, not the youtube clips, magister, but the pornhub (or similar) ones.
It's even easy to recognize the character - is the dominant one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:07PM
but any conservative in porn is usually the guy with the mask on or refuses to be shown.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @11:17AM (1 child)
"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that lobbyists influenced legislation we passed" said a Congressman who wished to remain anonymous so no one would know that he voted for this legislation.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 17 2017, @08:14PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/17/mccaskills-false-claim-that-she-wasnt-here-when-the-dea-bill-was-passed/ [washingtonpost.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @01:18PM (2 children)
So if there is a problem with a law, perhaps instead of just trying to inflame the situation, the summary should provide a link to the law.
The opioid crisis is a sad situation.
Congress makes the rules, the FDA and DEA control supply which raises prices, the industry profits, and the country and especially the users loose.
To say that the game is out of balance because the DEA has less muscle than they are used to kind of misses the point that the whole game is broken.
To understand how this particular law fits into this, one would have to look at the law.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday October 17 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/471 [congress.gov]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:30AM
"Please complete the security check to access www.congress.gov". Bleah.
(Score: 3, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday October 17 2017, @06:58PM (2 children)
Tom resigned so I won't have to fire him. I'm here to drain the swamp, and he's part of it. He's a very good man, a fine man. But he's a big, big part of the swamp, which is unacceptable. #MAGA 🇺🇸
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @03:13AM (1 child)
Now he can go to work for the industry and make much more money!!!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:56AM
Let me be clear, he resigned before he started working for my DEA. So he never missed a day of work in the House of Representatives. He calls it withdrawal. Meaning he pulled himself out. And another thing, I'm a big business guy. I'm all for our fine pharmaceutical industry. But the opioid crisis is an emergency, and I am saying, officially, right now, it is an emergency. It's a national emergency. We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis. It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had. Believe me, I want our pharma sector to make money, a lot of money. But not at the expense of the health of the American people. Because I always, always put the American people first. #MAGA 🇺🇸