The opioid crisis, lobbying, congress and big business

Looks like the pharmaceutical industry (like tobacco and sugar before them) lied to politics to get their products approved for wide use.

60 minutes report.

Quote:

In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed -- that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread -- aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.

Basically Pablo Escobar. In a suit.

This looks big on so many levels. I wonder if people in politics and the FDA were bribed into approving these drugs.

I'm not American but have been aware of the effects of this crisis since at least 2005.

Is the US finally going to tackle this? And will they go after Big Pharma?

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