"We found that the rate of opioid overdose deaths in the United States grew, on average, by 8 percent per year from 1999 through 2013 and by 71 percent per year from 2013 through 2017", the report says. The first federal trial on the crisis, dealing with claims against the drug industry from two OH counties, is scheduled to begin later this month in Cleveland.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the DEA hiked quotas for oxycodone, one of the most widely used painkillers, by 400 percent between 2002 and 2013 - flooding the pharmaceutical market with additional drugs that otherwise would not have been produced.
Horowitz's report also found that between 2002 and 2013 the DEA authorized a 400% increase in production of the opioid oxycodone, and that the agency did not significantly reduce production of the pain pill until 2017. They also have said cutting back the overall supply risked denying legitimate pain patients the drugs they need if shortages were inadvertently created.
In the report, weaknesses were identified in the DEA's registration process, which allowed manufacturers, distributors and health care providers to immediately reapply after their registration was revoked or surrendered.
The Post reported in 2017 that under heavy lobbying from the drug industry, Congress approved a change in federal law that made use of the orders nearly impossible.
The DEA is the chief federal agency responsible for setting production quotas and investigating related illicit activity.
The DEA issued 45 suspension orders in 2012, but over the next five years, issued just 43 in total, the Justice Department inspector general said.
In a statement Tuesday, the DEA said it "appreciates" the assessment, and that is has reduced the quota for the seven most frequently diverted opioids for the last three years. In concert with federal prosecutors, the agency has brought civil and criminal charges against more companies and practitioners accused of fueling the opioid crisis, spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said.
The DEA's 11-year-old system for recognizing "suspicious" orders of narcotics from dispensers such as drugstores, which provide perhaps the clearest warnings of diversion to the street, captured those orders "from very few registrants", Horowitz noted.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) allowed drug makers to ramp up the production of opioids over the same period of time that 141,298 people died from overdoses in the U.S., according to a report conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice and data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Most concerning when it comes to inter-agency collaboration, the DEA also failed to capture shareable data about the pipelines of illegally trafficked opioids, the OIG pointed out. As a result, the DEA was often a year behind in identifying possible bad actors - relying on 2017 annual data in 2018, for example, Horowitz wrote.
The mission of the DEA is to enforce laws and regulations related to "controlled substances", which include illegal drugs such as heroin and legal but closely monitored drugs such as prescription opioids.
