Opioid-related overdoses have killed 400,000 Americans since 1999. That's
equivalent to seven Vietnam wars. So, it's kind of hard to believe that our
government was not only complicit in starting it. But has actively helped drug
dealers get their hands on more opioids. And it's all because our politicians
have their own crippling addiction... Money.
Calling the opioid epidemic an epidemic makes it sound like it was some
contagion that we had no control over. That only Matt Damon could stop when, in
fact, it's the direct result of corruption. Shitty bureaucrats making
shitty decisions. Let's break this trainwreck down fail by fail. Fail number
one: The FDA. The FDA is an entire government agency with one job: To make
sure our food and drugs don't kill us. Which sometimes, you know, they get
confused with killing a lot of us. In 1995, Purdue pharmaceuticals develop
Oxycontin, a drug that is not heroin. It's more of a time-released heroin unless you
just crush it up a little bit and it's basically heroin. Naturally, the FDA took
one look at Oxycontin and said yes give it to everyone. Literally everyone! They
prescribed it for arthritis and back pain and all kinds of stuff it was not
only not intended for but very dangerous to treat. Within in a few years opioid
addiction and death had skyrocketed. Which is really weird because the label
for Oxycontin approved by the FDA read:
...it's not. So, the FDA started an epidemic
that's that's worse than the opposite of their job. It's like if you hired a dog
walker to walk your dog and instead of walking your dog, they removed its legs.
That's the FDA. Why is the FDA so bad at their job? Well, it turns out they're in
bed with drug companies. A recent study of certain FDA drug
Assessors found that between 2001 and 2010 and astonishing 58% of them left
their jobs at the FDA to go work for biopharmaceutical companies. They all
stopped walking dogs and they got jobs as dog leg removers! Which brings us to
our next point. Fail number two: the DEA. Because the FDA sucks, opioids were
everywhere by the mid-2000s. A lot of doctors and pharmacists had essentially
become drug dealers. They were just over prescribing opioids and sending them
directly to the black-market. Enter the DEA, an entire government agency with one
job: To combat drug smuggling and distribution. Now they get an idea...
Instead of prosecuting all of these pharmacists and doctors they'll stop
drug shipments at their source. Drug distributors and wholesalers. For example,
when 11 million doses of opioids are sent to a single County in West Virginia
of 25,000 people, or when a single Walgreens in Florida is selling a
million opioid prescriptions a year even though the average is 74,000. The DEA
could say "hey stop". It's an effective tactic which is exactly why they stopped
doing it. In 2011 there were 65 immediate drug suspension orders, by 2016 there
were only 8. Why? Well it's the same thing that happened at the FDA.
Since 2000, at least 56 DEA and Justice Department officials left the fight
against opioids to join pharmaceutical companies and the law firms representing
them but somehow something even more sinister was happening. Which brings us
to fail number three: Fucking Congress. Congress is a branch of government that
has one job to listen to the American people and enact our will. As is the
custom in this country, they never do this job. So maybe we shouldn't be
surprised to hear that, in 2016, Congress passed a bill making it nearly
impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious drug shipments. Let me say
that again... So, while Americans were dying of opioids
at a rate of a hundred and forty two people per day, Congress was busy getting
more opioids into the black market. The politicians responsible for this bill
claimed that they were addressing this problem of people not being able to
access painkillers when they needed to. But that year enough opioids were
prescribed in America for every one of us to be medicated around the clock for
three weeks. So let's find out who's responsible for this by playing a little
game called Guess Who? ...sucks. Here is Congress. Surprisingly the demographics
are pretty accurate. So, first let's eliminate everyone who
didn't vote for this bill. Oh well that's surprising. It passed unanimously!
Okay second, let's eliminate everyone who doesn't take money from the
pharmaceutical industry. Oh cool nine out of ten members of Congress take
drug money. Okay fine, let's just eliminate everyone except for the
members of Congress who sponsored this bill.
Hey look it's Orrin hatch and Tom Marino! What a coincidence! The pharmaceutical
industry was Tom and Orren's first and second biggest donors in 2016. After this
bill was passed Tom would go on to be nominated for drug czar and Orrin would
call for all welfare recipients to receive drug testing. Presumably to see
if they were ingesting the drugs that he was helping put on the streets. Now we
could go through the entire list of co-sponsors too, like Republican Marsha
Blackburn or Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. What about Republican and finalists on
NBC's "America's Got Neck" David Vitter. This guy now lobbies for the
pharmaceutical industry of course. The point is, our government is failing us.
Congress, the FDA, the DEA, they're all too corrupt to do their job and it's coming
at a horrific cost. Our country loses seventy eight point five billion dollars
a year to this fight which is vastly out shadowed by the hundreds of thousands of
lives lost. 500,000 more expected to die in the coming decade, and it's hard to
find an American who doesn't know someone battling the crucible of
addiction. This is just one of the many costs of a corrupt and broken system
that is failing all of us. And I'm not suggesting that we should set aside our
differences and hold hands and blah blah blah. We have a lot of legitimate
grievances with one another in this country. But this is not one of them. It's
not a partisan issue. It's a societal rot that is sinking the
entire country. And maybe, just maybe, here is where we can find a point of
consensus to actually do something together. Go to Represent.Us and find out
how. Thanks for watching. Remember to mercilessly tear one another apart in
the comments section below. Thanks for tuning in.