'We feel like our system was hijacked': DEA agents say a huge opioid case ended in a whimper

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post



By Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham December 17 at 6:00 AM

After two years of painstaking investigation, David Schiller and the rest of the Drug Enforcement Administration team he supervised were ready to move on the biggest opioid distribution case in U.S. history.

The team, based out of the DEA’s Denver field division, had been examining the operations of the nation’s largest drug company, McKesson Corp. By 2014, investigators said they could show that the company had failed to report suspicious orders involving millions of highly addictive painkillers sent to drugstores from Sacramento, Calif., to Lakeland, Fla. Some of those went to corrupt pharmacies that supplied drug rings. The investigators were ready to come down hard on the fifth-largest public corporation in America, according to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes.”

The DEA team — nine field divisions working with 12 U.S. attorney’s offices across 11 states — wanted to revoke registrations to distribute controlled substances at some of McKesson’s 30 drug warehouses. Schiller and members of his team wanted to fine the company more than $1 billion. More than anything else, they wanted to bring the first-ever criminal case against a drug distribution company, maybe even walk an executive in handcuffs out of McKesson’s towering San Francisco headquarters to send a message to the rest of the industry.

“This is the best case we’ve ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration,” said Schiller, who recently retired as assistant special agent in charge of DEA’s Denver field division after a 30-year career with the agency. “I said, ‘How do we not go after the number one organization?’ ” But it didn’t work out that way.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mckesson-dea-opioids-fine/2017/12/14/ab50ad0e-db5b-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html

[lark]

1. I can't read the article.

I haven't re-subscribed to WaPo. Did the administration tank the case and settle for basically nothing? drumpf doesn't give a damn about opioids, it's just another one of his millions of lies. If it sounds like he gives a damn, it either helps him, or is something Putin said to do. Otherwise, it's a straight lie, all the freaking time. I am so sick of him and the whole traitorous party.

[Blue_Adept]

2. Depending on your browser

right click on link, open in incognito browser.

[dawg day]

3. Oh, good, thanks.

[lark]

4. Wow, thanks, I didn't know that.

It worked! I have been considering re-subscribing, but already subscribe to NYT and just retired so trying to watch my pennies. Now I can read important articles without the extra cost, whoohoo! If my husband ever gets a better job, or more hours, I will gladly pay for WaPo again.

[Blue_Adept]

6. It's sort of a cheat but it still shows ads so they're at least getting that hit in my mind

There are ways that can disable it but they haven't so I just run with it. Once I use up my free viewings I try to be judicious to not "tke advantage" of it. But it's handy.

[packman]

9. Didn't know about that either - here's a link on how to do it

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001378.htm

Thanks for the tip

[Hortensis]

15. So you've never hit a limit either? I also try not to

take too much advantage. I miss our subscription, but...budget.

[Blue_Adept]

17. When I hit the limited I generally do my best to avoid hitting up said site

Sometimes there's a big piece that I want to read though and the incognito helps. I don't abuse it though since I run my own site and understand the value of clicks. With incognito they at least get the ad clicks.

[Hortensis]

18. Didn't think that at least I give ad clicks incognito also. :)

I'm one of those who actually wait for ad videos to finish, unless it's for Manhattan real estate or large business sysems, just to give something in return for the articles.

I meant any limit going incognito, though. I've tried not to overdo that after maxing out the standard freebies and will follow topics to other good journals when they're covering, so I've never been really sure there isn't a wall to hit there also.

[enough]

5. This entire appalling case is pre-Trump. NT

[Igel]

10. Yes, but most won't get that far.

I read for quite a ways into the article before I got the first date that led me to think that any of it was pre-1/20/17. It wasn't until very near the end that the settlement was dated January 2017. And even then, it doesn't give a date, allowing for the possibility that the deal was actually approved, over DEA agents' objections, by Trump. However unlikely that was, and in spite of the fact that the DA in the area wasn't yet replaced.


And most of those that do will most likely forget it and just remember that in 12/17 they heard that the government settled with a large opioid distributor, even as Trump and other (R) claimed to have made opioids a pressing issue.


Even worse, there's scant discussion as to why, exactly, the deal was struck. There's facts from the agents, there's speculation, there are odd-ball denials, but where, exactly, the facts vanished on the way up to the DA, *if* they vanished on the way up to the DA, is unknown. And left to the reader's limited imagination.

[FakeNoose]

14. For the 8 years while Obama was POTUS, the GOP was in control of Congress

Both houses, I might add. Oh, and they're still in control.

[Hortensis]

16. Yes, and this reeks of pro-business corruption.

[mr_lebowski]

23. 6 of the last 8 ...

Dems had both Houses from 2008-2010 ... handed back in the midterms 2010, remember? ACA and all that?

Just sayin'

[FakeNoose]

24. Yes I stand corrected

We're still pissed off though. And the Repukes are very corrupt.

[TeamPooka]

11. I just sent you a DU email with a surprise for you

[Dustlawyer]

7. Many of you have read of my firm's battle's with asbestos companies and BP.

BP in particular seems able to avoid the worst penalties for their conduct. It appears that you really cannot hold large multinational corporations liable like the rest of us. With $200 billion in annual profits most people cannot get their heads around what that kind of money can do!

A big state-by-state opioid litigation will soon commence just like the tobacco litigation. States will get some money to help with addiction etc., and that will be it. The pharma companies will keep on going after this, no one will go to jail.

[elleng]

8. Instead, top attorneys at the DEA and the Justice Department struck a deal

earlier this year with the corporation and its powerful lawyers, an agreement that was far more lenient than the field division wanted, according to interviews and internal government documents. Although the agents and investigators said they had plenty of evidence and wanted criminal charges, they were unable to convince the U.S. attorney in Denver that they had enough to bring a case.

Discussions about charges never became part of the negotiations between the government lawyers in Washington and the company.

“It was insulting,” Schiller said. “Morale has been broken because of it.”

The result illustrates the long-standing conflict between drug investigators, who have taken an aggressive approach to a prescription opioid epidemic that killed nearly 200,000 people between 2000 and 2016, and the government attorneys who handle those cases at the DEA and the Justice Department.'

[GReedDiamond]

12. Meanwhile, asshole hillbilly boy Sessions wants to go after legal cannabis...

...and help the drug cartels get back their illegal markets.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. Follow the money. Who benefits? tRump's 0.01% cronies. Lots of money in Big Pharma. . . . nt

[TexasBushwhacker]

19. Exactly

The GOP is happy to come down on drug users and street dealers, but when the DEA wants to go higher up the greed chain, it's looked upon as anti business.

It's the same thing with the whole illegal alien "problem". They'll spend billions on deporting people and building a fucking wall, but the reason undocumented workers come here is because they know they can find someone to hire them. If they came down HARD on the businesses that hire undocumented workers - builders, landscapers, food processing (like Tyson), HOTELS - and handed down jail sentences and hefty fines, that would be consudered anti business. They don't really want to fix the problem because it benefits business too much.

[TheFrenchRazor]

20. good. the War on Drugs isn't helping anybody. all they're doing is forcing legitimate patients to

suffer, or go through major hassles to get their medication at the very least. meanwhile of course, the current prohibitionist hysteria will do absolutely nothing to stop anyone from overdosing.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Dead Solid Correct, FR!

An essentially pointless battle! Hurting more than it helps.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

22. Kick