Governmental Population Control? –
Oct. 2, 2019 – The agency’s production quota for oxycodone, for instance, jumped about five times between 2002 and 2013. The agency cut the quota by 25 percent in 2017. But by then, the number of people dying from overdoses of commonly prescribed opioids had reached a nearly two-decade high.
The 77-page report paints a damning image of an agency that was slow to respond to the epidemic, allowed bad actors to keep manufacturing and distributing opioids, and failed to prevent controlled substances from entering the illegal drug trade.
The report cites one fairly straightforward step the agency didn’t take when approving companies to manufacture or distribute drugs: criminal background checks. Instead, it relied on applicants to disclose that information voluntarily.