The Opioid crisis
The following is select quotes from within the article.
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.
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.
The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.
Political action committees representing the industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill, including nearly $100,000 to Marino and $177,000 to Hatch. Overall, the drug industry spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016, according to lobbying reports.
Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.
In 2017, Hatch was one of 22 senators to sign a letter[92] to President Donald Trump urging the President to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Hatch has received over $470,000 from oil, gas and coal interests since 2012…. source wiki
Marino was nominee for Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.[1] He withdrew on October 17, 2017 following reports that he was the chief architect behind a bill that protected opioid manufacturers and crippled the DEA's ability to combat the opioid epidemic .. source wiki
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/dea-drug-industry-congress/?utm_term=.dfb39c6126c9