American Cartel: Inside the battle to bring down the opioid industry

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER –

July 7, 2022 – Rannazzisi came under attack by a tightknit coalition of drug company executives and lobbyists with close ties to members of Congress, and high-ranking officials inside the Department of Justice. They were aided by a cadre of former federal officials lured away from the DEA and the Justice Department by the lucrative payrolls of the companies they once regulated and the downtown D.C. law firms that represented them. One was D. Linden Barber, a top DEA lawyer who left the agency to represent the opioid industry. With his intimate knowledge of the DEA, Barber helped to write legislation for the drug industry that gutted the agency’s ability to aggressively pursue the companies. With a few words, the new law changed the definition of what kind of corporate behavior constituted an “imminent danger” to the public. It raised the evidentiary bar for the DEA, making it nearly impossible for the agency to meet the new standard in its efforts to shutter drug company warehouses. The legislation sailed through Congress in 2016 at the height of the prescription drug epidemic and was signed into law by President Barack Obama without a word from the Oval Office.