PD Editorial: Congress, stop making the opioid crisis worse

President Donald Trump last week declared the national opioid epidemic a public health emergency. It will take more than presidential declarations to reduce the ravages that painkillers are having on communities across the country. To start, Congress can undo its own effort to ease the flow of drugs from manufacturers to people who suffer from substance use disorders.

The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” recently documented in great detail how Congress undermined the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to intervene when painkillers were going to the wrong people. It’s a fascinating but long read. Here’s the short version:

DEA officials used to be able to halt drug sales from pharmaceutical companies if they had good reason to believe the drugs would be sold illegally. The agency also could pursue fines against violators. Drug companies for years lobbied to make that oversight more difficult. They found allies in Congress after making more than $1 million in campaign contributions. Those allies shepherded a bill to passage in 2016 that kneecapped the DEA’s authority. Drug companies no longer had to fear meddlesome agents looking over their shoulder as they sold painkillers.

The industry’s biggest ally in all of this was Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pennsylvania. This year, he became Trump’s nominees to be the next drug czar, but since the Washington Post-“60 Minutes” exposé revealed his close ties to drugmakers, he has been shamed into withdrawing.

This wasn’t a partisan failure. Democrats and Republicans cosponsored the bill, and President Barack Obama signed it. Officials from the Obama administration, perhaps realizing in retrospect that they shouldn’t have sided with drug companies over regular Americans, now don’t want to talk about it. Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and his DEA head, Chuck Rosenberg, refused to be interviewed by the Post and “60 Minutes.”

But what Congress has done, it can undo. If Trump and lawmakers truly want to fight the opioid epidemic, they should immediately repeal the 2016 law and give the DEA power to act once again.

America needs leadership as opioid abuse devastates lives, families and communities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 15,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription drugs in 2015. California is fortunate to have a comparatively low overdose rate, but even so there were nearly 2,000 deaths in 2016 - 23 of them in Sonoma County.

The societal costs of this epidemic run to billions of dollars in health care expenses, law enforcement, lost wages and reduced economic activity. Health care costs alone in California top $4 billion per year.

Repeal of the 2016 law should be just a start. America must invest more in prevention and treatment. Lawmakers also should consider repealing a decades-old law that limits the size of treatment facilities that treat Medicaid patients for substance use disorders to 16 beds. Larger facilities exist and work well.

And then there is what Congress and the White House shouldn’t do. They must keep the Affordable Care Act requirement that health insurers provide coverage parity for mental and behavioral health. Cost mustn’t be a barrier to receiving help for a substance use disorder.

Congress and the president won’t solve America’s opioid epidemic, but they can help. At a minimum, they need to stop making it worse.