Inspector General Criticizes DEA For Letting Opioid Production Surge

Many eyes have recently renewed their focus on the national opioid crisis. (Flickr)

The Office of the Inspector General, an independent watchdog agency, published a report on October 1 that criticized the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for allowing manufacturers to significantly increase the amount of painkiller pills they could produce each year. The rise in the number of painkillers produced has created a national opioid crisis that is claiming over 70,000 deaths per year in the U.S.. 

For the past two decades, the use of opioids as a painkiller has steadily risen, but these drugs are extremely addictive. Their widespread abuse and overprescription has led to a consistent rise in the number of deaths caused by overdoses. According to data released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2018, drug-related deaths contributed to a decrease in life expectancy in the U.S., the first time it has fallen since World War II. Overdose deaths for synthetic opioids such as fentanyl saw an especially large increase of 45 percent from 2016 to 2017.

Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s Inspector General, said in a video statement that the DEA, which is responsible for regulating opioid production quotas and investigating its illegal diversion, was “slow to respond to this growing public health crisis.” According to the report, the DEA increased the annual production quota of opioids by 400 percent, despite a 71 percent increase in overdose-related deaths from 2013 to 2017. 

The report also criticized the DEA for not using their strongest enforcement tool, a suspension order to stop companies from distributing drugs, during those four years when drug overdose deaths were rising most quickly. According to the Washington Post, a law passed in 2016 may also have limited the DEA’s ability to use the suspension order effectively by imposing strict restrictions on when the DEA could suspend a company’s shipments when they did not comply with the law.

While the report does conclude that the DEA has recently taken steps to address the opioid epidemic, the Inspector General emphasized that “more work is needed.” In a statement, a spokeswoman for the DEA noted that the agency “appreciated the O.I.G.’s assessment” and “continuously works to identify and root out the bad actors.” 

The report comes as major pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Allergan are being sued for their part in profiting off of the opioid crisis. The day after the OIG report, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay two Ohio counties $20 million in a settlement, one of the first federal lawsuits being brought against major drug companies. In September, Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical firm owned by the Sackler family that aggressively marketed Oxycontin as having a low-addiction risk despite knowing otherwise, filed for bankruptcy as part of a lawsuit brought by over 2,600 cities, counties, and state governments. The findings of the report will likely bolster the drug companies’ arguments that they only produced as many pills as the DEA authorized.