how the opioids keep winning the war

  Rannazzisi said that during a July 2014 conference call he informed congressional staffers the bill would cause more difficulties for the DEA if DEA pursued corporations which were illegally distributing such drugs.^[25]... A similar version introduced in the Senate by Orrin Hatch (R-UT) passed both houses of Congress by unanimous vote and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 19, 2016.^[21]  The legislation aimed to weaken the DEA's authority to take enforcement action against drug distributors who supplied unscrupulous physician and pharmacists with opioids for diversion to the black market.^[20]  Previously, the DEA had fined individuals who profited on suspicious sales of painkillers and repeatedly ignored warnings that the painkillers were sold illegally.^[20]  The new legislation would have made it "virtually impossible" for the DEA to stop these sales, according to internal agency documents, Justice Department documents, and the DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II.^[20]  

The drug industry spent at least $102 million lobbying Congress on the legislation between 2014 and 2016.^[20]  McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health spent $13 million lobbying in support of the bill.^[22]    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Marino

Marino (R-PA, shown) wrote the bill to help big pharma screw America in 2016

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^9-13-2019

  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 narcotics onto the nation’s streets.

  By then the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War.  Overdose deaths continue to rise.  There is no end in sight.

  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.”…

   

  Joseph Rannazzisi (DEA top enforcer) was stunned.  He had brought hundreds of these cases and had never been called to brief Deputy Attorney General of US James M. Cole, the ­second-most-powerful law enforcement official in the country.  The meeting quickly “spiraled out of control,” Rannazzisi said.  “It was adversarial to say the least.”  …

  AT LEAST 56 DEA AND JUSTICE OFFICIALS WENT TO WORK FOR THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY since 2000.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/dea-drug-industry-congress/

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  Donald Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he was "dubious" about the law when it passed and joined 44 state attorneys general calling for "repeal or amendment of the law to restore some of the DEA's authority."^[111][112]   Jim Geldhof, a former DEA program manager whom spent 43 years with the DEA called the bill "outrageous. It basically takes any kind of action DEA was going to do with a distributor or manufacturer as far as an immediate suspension off the table.  And then the other part of that really infuriates me is that corrective action plan."^[113] Mulrooney compared the corrective action plan to one that would "allow bank robbers to round up and return inkstained money and agree not to rob any more banks — all before any of those wrongdoers actually admit fault and without any consequence that might deter such behavior in the future."^[114]

Hatch responded to a Washington Post and 60 Minutes investigation into the bill by writing a Washington Post opinion article calling the investigation "misleading" and asking to "leave conspiracy theories to Netflix".^{[115]     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch}

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•   Drugmakers have poured close to $2.5bn into lobbying and funding members of Congress over the past decade.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone to McConnell – although he is hardly alone.  
  Nine out of 10 members of the House of Representatives and all but three of the US’s 100 senators have taken campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies seeking to affect legislation.   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/19/big-pharma-money-lobbying-us-opioid-crisis
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  see https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2019/02/26/these-senators-received-the-biggest-checks-from-pharma-companies-testifying-drug-pricing-abbvie-sanofi-merck-pfizer/#6a29c8ef1da2