Trump's DEA joins drug companies in trying to block opioid data release

[Tanuki]

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/dea-drug-firms-join-forces-in-push-for-opioid-data/article_20d39d5d-fea5-59e8-89f6-86ba97ebdd61.html

"The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the nation’s largest drug distributors teamed up Thursday to block the public release of information that would show the number of opioid painkillers the companies delivered to pharmacies across America.

At the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Cincinnati, a Justice Department lawyer told a three-judge panel that revealing the pill numbers would compromise ongoing investigations, even though the records date back at least five years.
.......

Lawyers for The Washington Post and HD Media, which owns the Charleston Gazette-Mail and Huntington’s Herald-Dispatch, argued that the distributors and DEA have other motives for wanting to keep the information secret: The disclosures could embarrass companies that shipped massive quantities of prescription pain pills like OxyContin to states, cities and towns with populations that couldn’t possibly have needed so many painkillers. And the DEA doesn’t want to have to explain why it didn’t stop the deluge of pills.

The oversupply of opioid pain medications — triggered by doctors writing too many prescriptions — is widely believed to have started the opioid epidemic and led to a record number of fatal overdoses.
.........

At the hearing Thursday, appellate Judge Richard Allen Griffin said it was troubling that the DEA would want to keep a lid on data “paid for by taxpayers” that the “public has the right to know about.”
.........(more at link)

[Botany]

1. So are the voters from KY, WV, TN, and so on where they have lost so many to opioids are still ...

.... gonna vote for Trump?

[mr_lebowski]

2. Remember the 60 minutes episode a year or so back, the expose with a former DEA bigwig ...

Explaining how this whole thing worked?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/

Pretty damned chilling stuff ... and from this current article, looks like the process of cover-up ... may be close to complete.

[UniteFightBack]

3. "Greed always tRUMPed compliance, it did every time" .....something tells me this story ain't over.

[struggle4progress]

4. "It would be terrible if people blamed the opioid epidemic on the manufacturers and distributors

instead of blaming poor brown women and children who are fleeing from violence in Central America!"