With Rep. Marino out, it is time again to ask “Does Marijuana Stand a Chance With New DEA Chief?”
A joint report by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes found that Marino’s bill “helped pump more painkillers into parts of the country that were already in the middle of the opioid crisis,” as NPR’s Kelly McEvers said earlier this week. The bill had been opposed by the DEA and embraced by companies in the drug industry.
Marino was a main backer of the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act; among other things, the measure changed the standard for identifying dangers to local communities, from “imminent” threats to “immediate” threats. That change cramped the DEA’s authority to go after drug companies that didn’t report suspicious — and often very large — orders for narcotics.
After the Post and 60 Minutes reports on the bill emerged, several members of Congress called for the White House to pull Marino’s nomination as drug czar. Sen. Joe Machin, D-W.V., said he was “horrified” by the story, adding that he “cannot believe the last administration did not sound the alarm on how harmful that bill would be for our efforts to effectively fight the opioid epidemic.”
In a letter to the president, Manchin wrote about the ability of wholesale drug distributors to send millions of pills into small communities: “As the report notes, one such company shipped 20 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies in West Virginia between 2007 and 2012. This included 11 million doses in one small county with only 25,000 people in the southern part of the state: Mingo County. As the number of pills in my state increased, so did the death toll in our communities, including Mingo County.”
After Marino’s name was withdrawn, Manchin tweeted to Trump, “thanks for recognizing we need a drug czar who has seen the devastating effects of the problem.” Manchin is a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal the changes made by the 2016 law, along with Sen. Clarie McCaskill, D-Mo., and Sen. Margaret Wood Hassan, D-N.H.
In the Senate, the bill was sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah — who also saw it through the markup process. In Congress and on Twitter, Hatch has defended his role this week, calling the Post story “flawed” and “one-sided.” Hatch also said the bill was supported by patient groups who “were concerned about DEA’s unfettered enforcement authority.”
“I spent months negotiating with DEA and with DOJ until they were at a point where they were comfortable allowing the bill to proceed,” Hatch said on Capitol Hill Monday. “If they had asked me to hold the bill or to continue negotiations, I would have done so.” Hatch noted via Twitter, “President Obama signed this bill into law. DEA and DOJ, who work for the President, could have urged him to veto it. They did not.”…
The president had nominated Marino to lead the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In his tweet announcing Marino’s decision to withdraw Tuesday morning, Trump added, “Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!”
The opioid story was revealed by whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi, a former high-ranking DEA official, who told 60 Minutes, “This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors’ offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs.” Of Marino’s nomination, Rannazzisi said he was in “total disbelief” after the White House announced Trump’s pick. He added, “The bill was bad. Him being the drug czar is a lot worse.”
With the head of the DEA now uncertain, this Newsweek story from last month, headlined “Does Marijuana Stand a Chance With New DEA Chief?”, becomes timely once again. Here is a segment from that piece:
Many hope the change could serve as a blank slate for the agency and a chance to pick the right battles in the war on drugs, like focusing on the deadly opioid epidemic, which has skyrocketed in recent years and left more than 52,000 dead in 2015.
Despite the troubling statistics, law enforcement has continued to target pot consumers, even though more and more states are moving toward legalization. Nearly 30 states allow the drug for medical use, and eight have legalized it recreationally. The FBI released data this week that showed an increase in the number of people arrested last year on a marijuana possession charge. Nearly 600,000 were charged, and experts say this cost taxpayers billions of dollars as offenders made their way through the criminal justice system.
“I hope that whoever is next will deal with the reality that a lot of states have legalized [marijuana] and it’s not a good use of resources for police to be arresting these people and ruining lives,” said Bill Piper, a senior director for the Drug Policy Alliance. “These are proven failed ways to approach this issue.”
Under Rosenberg, more than two dozen applications to simply research the plant have been blocked, a policy that is unlikely to change, said Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Attorney General Jeff Sessions opposes marijuana legalization, even for medicinal purposes, and has called the plant “only slightly less awful” than heroin…. All in all, if Rosenberg’s replacement does try to enact new policies or steer the department toward change, it could be difficult. “I’m not optimistic at all,” Tree said. “Not during this administration.”