This Is The Swamp On Drugs (UPDATED)

Yesterday's joint report by CBS News and the Washington Post on the efforts by Congress and the pharma industry to sabotage efforts to rein in the flood of opioids is another story of money and a corrupt Rethuglican Congress. Ex-Drug Enforcement Agency official Joe Rannazzisi was in charge of investigating drug companies as head of the Office of Diversion Control, specifically when it appeared that they were distributing vastly unnecessary quantities of dangerous opioids. His efforts were blocked when a bill written by the pharma lobby was passed by the Rethuglican-controlled Congress that effectively stopped DEA from keeping drug companies from flooding the burgeoning "pain clinic" market and pharmacies looking to make a windfall with opioids. An example cited in the report was a pharmacy in tiny Kermit, WV, with a population of 392, that ordered 9 million hydrocodone pills over two years. The legislation is an example of the total, cynical hollowness of the "drain the swamp" con, and one where thousands of people are losing their lives as a result of industry greed and Rethuglican complicity.

The House sponsors of the legislation that undercut the DEA's enforcement effort were two Rethuglicans, Pennsylvania Rep. Tom Marino and Tennessee Rep. Marsha "Blackheart" Blackburn. Their legislation stripped DEA of the authority to immediately freeze large, suspicious shipments of opiods, such as those to Kermit, WV. Thirteen people per day die of an overdose in Pennsylvania, while Tennessee is the third highest prescriber of opioids.  Disturbingly, Marino is neo-fascist sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump's nominee to be the new "drug czar."  His nomination fits a pattern of Rump's: put someone in a key agency position who is antithetical and hostile to that agency's mission.

UPDATE:  He gone.