Opioid drug crisis: could the whole US Congress be impeached?

First, a little background. Then I’ll get to the Congress. And Obama.

Severe addiction, mental dislocation, death. Millions of people are facing the devastating effects of the pharma drugs called opioids, on the streets of America—illegally trafficked.

2 MILLION OPIOID ADDICTS IN THE US.

300,000 DEATHS SINCE THE YEAR 2000 IN THE US.

Those are the official estimates, as of about 2 years ago. The numbers are rising.
 
We need to understand that people with deep physical pain should be able to obtain sufficient painkillers from doctors. Shortages being experienced are coming from drug over-enforcement in the wrong direction.

The situation is made more complex by the fact that traditional morphine, plus another few synthetic opioids, would be sufficient to handle all patients’ needs. BUT, when I started counting the pharmaceutical opioids in the marketplace, I stopped at 50. This is insane. There is absolutely no need for all these derivatives. And they make regulation and enforcement far more difficult. But the drug companies don’t care. They pursue profit.

Where are all the opioids that are maiming and killing people coming from? Who is launching these drugs on to the streets of nations?

Three main criminal sources of US opioids: pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue, who’ve filled gargantuan orders they KNOW are going to traffickers; Chinese labs; and Mexican processors and smugglers.

The rush of immigrants coming across the US southern border has diverted so many US agents, they can’t possibly stem the tide of opioids being smuggled through those borders. That’s just one effect of massive immigration that so-called “liberals” don’t think about. Millions of lives destroyed by the drugs are essentially being traded for open borders.

As ABC News reported on July 19, 2019, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stored enough fentanyl in the past year to kill an estimated 794 MILLION people…”  That would be seized opioids at the US border. Fentanyl is 100 TIMES MORE POTENT than morphine. Mexico is a major pipeline. A significant percentage of the smuggled drugs comes to Mexico out of China. If that much fentanyl has been seized, how much of the drug has gotten through?

CBS News, August 30, 2019: “Law enforcement officers in Virginia have seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 million people, busting a massive three-state drug ring…one of the 39 people charged ordered fentanyl from Shanghai and had it delivered to Virginia through the mail.”  So there is that route as well—China direct to the US through the US Postal Service.

If you’re getting the idea that this is a kind of chemical warfare against the population, you’re correct.

For the moment, let’s focus on pharmaceutical companies who are basically trafficking opioids on to the streets of America. Why can’t federal law enforcement stop that murderous flow in the blink of an eye?

Is there some secret we don’t know about? No. In fact, the answers are right out in the open. I had them confirmed over a year ago, from a source inside the DEA. But talk about “open—” the Washington Post laid out the sordid story in detail. AND AS USUAL, THERE WAS NO FOLLOW-UP. That’s how major media work. They have a piece of very ugly truth. They expose it. But then it mysteriously dies and is forgotten. In this case (opioid trafficking), a real follow-up would have led the public down into a Hell of evil influence, exerted by Pharma, on the US Congress.

Buckle up.

A 2016 LAW SIGNED BY OBAMA SHACKLED THE DEA (DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION) IN ITS EFFORTS TO CRACK DOWN ON BIG PHARMA OPIOID TRAFFICKERS.

That law is the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on 4/9/16.

And that is the federal government’s role in perpetuating and expanding the opioid crisis.

Honest agents inside the complacent DEA want to have the right to march into a pharmaceutical company headquarters and say, “We know you’re shipping millions of opioid pills to little pharmacies and clinics that, in turn, are selling the pills to street dealers. We’re going to freeze those shipments now, and we’re going to arrest your key executives.”

But that 2016 law raises the bar so high, the whole law-enforcement effort is hamstrung, throttled, and loaded down with legal complications.

In essence, the US Congress gave drug companies a free pass.

And no one in the Congress is admitting it or talking about it.

The Washington Post, on October 15, 2017, talked about it. The article was headlined, “The Drug Industry’s Triumph Over the DEA”:

“In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription [opioid] narcotics onto the nation’s streets.”

“A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and ’60 Minutes’…”

“The law [which was passed with an overwhelming YES count by both house of Congress] was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution [pharma] companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled [opioid] narcotics to the black market. The [drug] industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress [to pass the 2016 law], pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns.”

“The new [2016] 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 [freezing opioid shipments] had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.”

The Washington Post article mentioned there was an attempt to reach Obama (who had signed the law) and obtain his comments. The effort failed. Obama kept his mouth shut.

EVERYONE IS NOW AWARE OF THE LAW’S HORRENDOUS IMPACT. WHY DOESN’T THE CONGRESS REPEAL IT?

The fact that no one is stepping up to the plate with a fast repeal is proof that multiple parts of the federal government are, in fact, tacitly supporting the opioid crisis and its devastating impacts on human life.

Failure to act swiftly amounts to collusion in Death by Opioids.

President Obama, the Congress, and key officials within the Justice Department and the DEA are all guilty.

My article is not about current efforts to impeach Trump. But, having read this piece, you should weigh the proposed charges against Trump, versus the potential charges against Obama and the whole Congress, Democrat and Republican, for the opioid crisis. I don’t care what you think of Trump or Obama, the leaders of both Parties, the Congress, liberals, conservatives, Communists, racists, socialists, Biden, Warren, Sanders. The facts about opioid crimes are clear. The corruption is deep. The human damage and loss of life are terrible.

If you speak to people who have a naïve and lasting faith in the good will of political leaders, they will probably tell you that the heinous 2016 law I detailed above was “an unfortunate mistake.”  The members of Congress “didn’t know what they were voting for.”  And somehow, that lets everyone off the hook. Really? Congress has known what they voted for (if indeed they were all ignorant back in 2016) for the past two years. SO WHY HAVEN’T THEY REPEALED THE LAW? Why haven’t they remedied their “error?”  Why have they let untold numbers of people die for those two years while staying silent? Why hasn’t the whole Congress risen up to squash the “mistake?”  They could do it in an hour. Obviously, they don’t want to admit their prior guilt. They don’t want an investigation which, if done with even a vague imitation of honesty, would expose some of their members as WILLING AND KNOWING COLLABORATORS IN DEATH. They don’t want to admit that the pharma campaign money they take is sufficient inducement to fake a blindness to the death they’re assigning to their own constituents and people all over America.

Still assigning. Now.

You Congressional representatives running for the Presidency on the Democratic side, and you Republican Congressional representatives who are thinking of challenging Trump for the Presidency, and you Congressional leaders from both Parties, (and you, Trump), get back into session and repeal the murder law you passed. Don’t wait for the stupid and mindless Health and Human Services “public comment period” on the law to be digested. For one real moment in your lives, stop lying and covering up and selling yourself and submitting to blackmail and do the right thing—not for forgiveness—but because you have to do it. Just take a collective breath and get back in that room and repeal the law. At least for the hour or so you’ll need to do the job, prove to the majority of the American people, who believe you’re incorrigible frauds, that you can do one thing once. One necessary thing once.