Washington • Sen. Orrin Hatch strongly denied Monday that legislation he pushed into law had exacerbated the opioid crisis by taking away a key tool from the Drug Enforcement Administration to halt large shipments of drugs.
“I’m no patsy when it comes to drug abuse, prescription or otherwise,” Hatch said on the Senate floor. “And neither are my colleagues.”
An investigation by The Washington Post and CBS’s “60 Minutes” found that the legislation passed last year and signed into law by President Barack Obama halted the DEA from curbing the ability of drug companies suspected of flooding the nation with prescription pain pills outside the legal distribution chain.
The opioid crisis is blamed for more than 200,000 American deaths and President Donald Trump said Monday he is planning to name it a national emergency next week.
The Post-60 Minutes story took a deep look at Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., who is now Trump’s nominee to serve as the U.S. drug czar and his efforts over several years to pass the law through Congress.
The legislation passed without a single objection in the Senate and House and was backed by the White House and the DEA. Hatch led the final negotiations on the bill.
The Post story noted that political action committees representing the drug industry gave at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored the bill, including $177,000 that went to Hatch’s election committees.
Hatch said the news story defied the facts to undercut Marino’s nomination and called it an attack by former DEA officials upset the agency is now trying to work with the drug industry instead of fighting them.
The DEA could have stopped the bill, Hatch said Monday, “And even after the bill passed Congress, they could have advised President Obama not to sign on. Don’t forget the bill bears his signature. Let’s not pretend that DEA, both houses of Congress, and the Obama White House all somehow wilted under Representative Marino’s nefarious influences.”
Hatch said the DEA had other ways to curb the opioid epidemic and the 2016 law just clarified language – some of it submitted by the DEA itself.
A single news article that tells only one side of the story should not derail a nominee who has a long history of fighting illegal drug use and of helping individuals with chronic conditions obtain treatment,” Hatch said. “Let’s not ignore the full story here in the rush toward easy politics.”
The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reported that after multiple rejected attempts to contact Marino for comment, reporters arrived at his office only to have Capitol police called to eject them.