The Drug Enforcement Administration permitted painkiller manufacturers to exponentially increase production of opioids even in the face of data showing overdose deaths were spiking, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Deaths from opioids increased about 8 percent from 1999 to 2013, and then spiked 70 percent from 2013 to 2017 as the crisis spun out of control. The DEA, which increased oxycodone-production quotas by 400 percent between 2002 and 2013, was “slow to respond” to the surge in deaths, according to the inspector general’s withering report.
Despite evidence that opioids were being “overprescribed and misused,” it was not until 2017, when a record 48,000 people died from overdoses and the White House declared the opioid epidemic a public-health crisis, that the DEA curbed its opioid-production quotas by 25 percent. The report also found the DEA did not collect sufficient data on the crisis, which it said may have contributed to the agency’s slow response.
West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey previously sued the DEA over its ballooning opioid-production quotas during the crisis.
“Every aspect of the pharmaceutical supply chain bears responsibility for the havoc and senseless death unleashed upon West Virginia – and the DEA is no exception,” Morrisey said. “For years, the DEA was grossly negligent in its mismanagement of the national drug quota system. Unfortunately, this mismanagement contributed to the senseless death of many Americans.”
The report comes as many of the entities responsible for escalating the opioid crisis face the ire of the families of victims and local governments. Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, reached a tentative multi-billion dollar settlement last month with 22 state attorneys general and thousands of local governments and tribes that sued the drug manufacturer, charging that it catalyzed the crisis.