Why is the media silent on the role the southern border and sanctuary cities play in the opioid epidemic?
[6]
Oct. 18, 2017
Permission to republish original op-eds and cartoons granted.
The opioid story 60 Minutes won’t tell you is coming from the Mexican drug cartels<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tj-73ga0e01/>
A recent 60 Minutes segment ignores the real heroin problem that is engulfing the nation’s streets coming from the cartels from Mexico and the city gangs that assist them. Our cities are being overrun. That is the real crisis that the left-wing media continues to ignore that is killing thousands of Americans, proving they have yet to find a low they will not stoop too.
To help Trump end the war on coal, Congress should permanently repeal the Obama Clean Power Plan<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tk-73ga0e02/>
President Donald Trump has exited the Paris climate accords, and the EPA is following through with ending the new and existing coal power plant regs under the Obama Clean Power Plan. But to provide permanent relief, Congress needs to do its part and revise the Clean Air Act to prevent this from ever happening again. Otherwise the next Democrat president will just reinstate the rules.
Circa.com: A Russian nuclear firm under FBI investigation was allowed to purchase US uranium supply<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tl-73ga0e03/>
U.S. official: "At the time of the investigation did any of the U.S. law enforcement, intelligence or other agencies involved in the case inform the CFIUS board of the ongoing investigation? If not, why not? If they were informed, why did they make the decision they did to approve the Uranium One transaction? Did the president, himself, know?”
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The opioid story 60 Minutes won’t tell you is coming from the Mexican drug cartels
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By Printus LeBlanc
Once again, the Washington Post and the CBS "news” program 60 Minutes proved journalism is dead. 60 Minutes ran a very misleading program that attempted to pin the opioid epidemic on two members of the House of Representatives.
The truth is, this epidemic is a total government failure, just not the one 60 Minutes focused on to do with Drug Enforcement Agency distributor license suspensions, which now require Attorney General approval under a new law passed by Congress. The real problem is that multiple presidents, leaders in Congress and thousands of council members have failed in their most basic duty to protect the American people from heroin that has been coming across the southern border from Mexico.
The issue raised by the report is a worthy issue. The U.S. is currently in the midst of an opioid crisis that threatens to kill more Americans per year than many U.S. wars.
The story 60 Minutes told made it seem like the opioid epidemic somehow stemmed from a law passed in 2016, H.R. 471 Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2015<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tm-73ga0e04/>. A bill introduced by Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and cosponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and five other Members. This is, of course, impossible because the law was not passed until mid-2016. The CDC has not even released data related to opioid deaths for 2016, but there the mainstream media is, blaming this law with no data to back it up.
For the drugs coming from Mexico, there is plenty of blame to go around, but you have to wonder why these two members were singled out on an innocuous bill narrowing governing a process on license suspensions that passed both the House and the Senate unanimously, and was signed into law by former President Barack Obama.
Let’s take a look at what really happened.
Yes, the opioid epidemic started with prescription drugs. In 1996, Purdue Pharma introduced an opioid-based painkiller to the market, Oxycontin, also known as Oxy. Before the introduction of Oxy, opioid-based painkillers were primarily used in patients suffering from cancer, due to their strength and highly addictive properties.
Opioid-based drugs reduce feelings of pain and trigger the release of dopamine, the most important neurotransmitter in the brain’s reward system<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tn-73ga0e05/>. The drug creates a mixture of euphoria and pain relief, bringing about a relaxed and contented mood in the user. Purdue believed it got around the addiction problem by having the medication on a time release over twelve hours.
Purdue launched an all-out sales campaign targeting doctors that dealt with pain medication. The campaign itself would come under fire years later by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In 2003 the GAO stated<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402to-73ga0e06/>, "Purdue has been cited twice by FDA for using potentially false or misleading medical journal advertisements for OxyContin that violated the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), including one advertisement that failed to include warnings about the potentially fatal risks associated with OxyContin use.”
Purdue Pharma and several executives would plead guilty<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tp-73ga0e07/> to misleading regulators, doctor, and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction. The company would pay $600 million in fines and fees. It turned out Oxy was highly addictive — and deadly.
Eventually, the drug companies, distributors, and pharmacists recognized the problem, and a combination of industry, DEA and medical profession action stemmed the rise in opioid-based prescriptions and overdoses, which peaked in 2011 according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control.
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning blasted the 60 Minutes program, stating, "The 60 Minutes segment contends DEA immediate license suspensions [affected under the 2016 law] are the ‘most potent tool in fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics.’ Yet, according to Centers for Disease Control data<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tq-73ga0e08/>, opioid related deaths caused by commonly prescribed opioids peaked in 2011 and has remained relatively constant since that point. That covers the very period the original Washington Post story<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tr-73ga0e09/> notes the slowdown of license suspensions by the Obama Justice Department. Apparently, the Justice Department’s new approach to enforcement away from immediate license suspensions had no bearing on the overall crisis. The same amount of deaths related to prescription overdoses occurred with the immediate license suspensions as without.”
The data from the Centers for Disease Control clearly shows a dip in prescription-related opioid deaths after 2011 (before the law in question was passed), and that the real recent explosion of opioid overdose deaths centers on heroin and synthetic opioid deaths. Why do you think that wasn’t reported in the story?

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What happened next is the fault of Republican and Democrat administrations both.
While attention was being paid, and rightfully so, to the prescription problem — although the disproportionate attention on the DEA distributor license suspensions authority moving to the Attorney General’s office is a bit dubious — the problems south of the border from the Mexican drug cartels, as well as city gangs and sanctuary cities was being ignored.
Mexican drug cartels saw what was happening with the prescription opioids in the U.S. and knew what was coming next, a street alternative once the pills were cracked down on. Insight Crime, an organization that study’s the threat of organized crime in Latin America, reports<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402ts-73ga0e00/>, "Obeying the basics rules of supply and demand, Mexico<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tt-73ga0e01/>' s cartels have changed their opium processing methods, inserting themselves into a growing market, ‘which has allowed the heroin threat to expand to unprecedented levels,’ according to the 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary (pdf<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tu-73ga0e02/>) from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).”
The Mexican cartels would switch from growing marijuana to opium, and make the switch in a hurry. From the end of 2005, the Bush administration, through the Obama administration, Mexican heroin production increased by almost 1000 percent. It is now estimated 90 to 94 percent of all heroin<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tv-73ga0e03/> in the U.S. comes from Mexico. What does that say about the federal government when Mexican drug cartels saw the opioid crisis coming before the feds realized what happened?
Even former President Bill Clinton can identify the problem 60 Minutes ignores, telling the U.S. Mayors Conference<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tw-73ga0e04/> in Miami. "Because as the government got better at dealing with opioids, more people moved into heroin. Heroin is even cheaper now because it is now being grown in Mexico in the hidden parts of the Sierra Madre Mountains and being harvested by preteens. And then it got even cheaper with fentanyl which is a synthetic drug that if you have a 13-year-old child or certainly a 15-year-old child who can make a ‘C’ in high school chemistry and access to a garage they can learn how to make. And now it’s becoming attractive to urban gangs. It’s going to eat us all alive.” Turns out, even Clinton agrees with President Donald Trump that the problem is coming from Mexico.
Due to multiple administrations failing to secure the southern border, the heroin was able to walk across the U.S. border with ease. Once across the border, the narcotics would make their way to major distribution hubs like Chicago and Los Angeles, according to reports by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
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State and local politicians around the nation also bear a tremendous amount of blame for what is happening. Many cities that have become major drug distribution centers are also sanctuary cities. Cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York are proud to proclaim their sanctuary status and their lack of cooperation with the federal government on illegal immigrant communities that the cartels have embedded themselves in.
The local politician's lack of cooperation with federal authorities has led their cities down a dangerous and deadly path. Somehow the strong links between sanctuary cities, weak border security, and opioid deaths didn’t make the 60 Minutes story.
As for the prescription drug problems, the 60 Minutes piece also forgot to mention the correlation between government-run healthcare and the use of prescription opioids as government insurance programs pay help pay for the crisis. A recent study by Annals of Internal Medicine<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tx-73ga0e05/>, found a scary number of Medicaid patients, many of whom are elderly and disabled, 47.9 percent, receive prescriptions for opioid-based painkillers. That is elevated from 34.6 percent of privately insured individuals receiving similar prescriptions.
The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services released a report on opioids and Medicare. The report stated<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402ty-73ga0e06/>, "In total, 14.4 million of the 43.6 million beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Part D received opioids. Medicare Part D paid almost $4.1 billion for 79.4 million opioid prescriptions for these beneficiaries. The vast majority of these opioids (80 percent) were Schedule II or III controlled substances, meaning they have the highest potential for abuse among legally available drugs.”
Another study in published in Patient Preference and Adherence in 2014<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tz-73ga0e07/> discussed the link between patient satisfaction surveys and prescribing opioids. In the survey, over 48 percent of doctors admitted to prescribing inappropriate pain medication. Doctors did this because the surveys are linked to a satisfaction score that was used by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for reimbursements. Bad scores equal low or zero reimbursements.
CBS News<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u0-73ga0e04/> even did a story on the link between patient surveys the opioid crisis earlier this year. In case you were wondering, 60 Minutes is broadcast on CBS. Couldn't they be bothered to walk down the hall and ask their colleagues about the issue? Did 60 Minutes or the Washington Post bother to ask anyone at HHS if any of their programs that spend billions on prescription drugs could be inadvertently be contributing to the opioid epidemic?
Then there is the inexplicable partisan angle on a story about a bipartisan bill that passed Congress unanimously. The 60 Minutes report made a big deal out of going to the offices of Blackburn and Marino. But did the intrepid journalists happen to go to Rep. Judy Chu’s (D-Calif.) office? Chu was one of the six cosponsors of the Marino bill<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u1-73ga0e05/>. Did the investigative journalists make their way to Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), another cosponsor of the bill? What about on the Senate side, where Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was a cosponsor<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u2-73ga0e06/>? I wonder why the "nonpartisan” journalists couldn’t find those offices?
Better yet, why didn’t the Washington Post or 60 Minutes go to the current offices of former Attorneys General Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch? If the problem for the DEA began when the whistleblower said it did, that would fall under Holder. If the problem persisted, like the whistleblower said it did, that would fall under Lynch, both AGs for President Obama. I wonder why "journalists” made little to no effort to contact either AG.
Let us not forget, the measure passed with unanimous consent. That means not one single member of the House of Representatives (435) or Senate (100) chose to vote against the legislation. If that is true, then why did 60 Minutes concentrate on Blackburn and Marino?
Could it be that Marino has been nominated by President Trump to be the Drug Czar? Could the recent announcement by Blackburn that she intends to run for Senate have anything to do with the timing of the story? After all, the Washington Post wrote a very in-depth article about the issue last October<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u3-73ga0e07/> that reads like a transcript for the 60 Minutes piece.
Make no mistake about it. What happened Sunday night was a political hit piece. A run of good news for President Donald Trump combined with a run of terrible news for Democrats forced the mainstream media to step in. They dusted off a year-old story and made it seem like a piece of legislation supported by all Members of Congress was specifically the fault of two Republicans while ignoring the culpability of the Obama and Bush administrations.
In the meantime, the story ignores the real heroin problem that is engulfing the nation’s streets coming from the cartels from Mexico and the city gangs that assist them. Our cities are being overrun. That is the real crisis that the left-wing media continues to ignore that is killing thousands of Americans, proving they have yet to find a low they will not stoop too.
Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor for Americans for Limited Government.
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To help Trump end the war on coal, Congress should permanently repeal the Obama Clean Power Plan
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By Robert Romano
President Donald Trump did the right thing. He exited the Paris climate accords. And Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has followed through on that promise, announcing the Trump administration’s intent to rescind the new and existing coal power plant rules issued under Obama Clean Power Plan.
It’s a good idea. Since the former Obama administration began its war on coal in 2009 — beginning with the Carbon Endangerment Finding — coal as a percentage of the electrical grid has declined from 49 percent in 2007<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u4-73ga0e08/> to 31 percent in 2016<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u5-73ga0e09/>, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). Natural gas now surpasses coal at 34 percent as a result.
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With data as 2016, 374 coal-burning power plants in 37 states were closing<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u6-73ga0e00/> due to the EPA regulations, according to Americaspower.org. The states hardest hit<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u7-73ga0e01/> by these plant closing include Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, which proved critical to President Donald Trump’s electoral college victory last November.
Largely a result of the coal plant closures, overall electricity generation in the U.S. has dropped from 4.005 trillion kWh in 2007 to 3.92 trillion kWh in 2016, while end use has only decreased from 3.89 trillion kWh to just 3.853 trillion kWh<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u8-73ga0e02/>, with just 67 billion kWh of spare capacity. That’s not enough. We need coal.
Again, the Trump EPA has the right idea. But to be a long-term solution, Congress needs to do its part and revise the Clean Air Act to prevent this from ever happening again. Not that Congress ever allowed the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon. That was the Supreme Court in 2007, with the infamous Massachusetts v. EPA decision. Still, it is Congress that can fix it, by explicitly excluding the possibility of regulating carbon emissions as pollutants.
Otherwise, the next time the Democrats win the White House, a future president can just come back and reinstate the new and existing power plant rules. And then we can go back and forth, rescinding the rules, reinstating the rules.
Why would anybody invest in a new coal power plant under those circumstances, if the investment can just be eviscerated every four to eight years?
To create economic certainty, Congress must look toward policies that incentivize long-term capital investments like power plants and bolstering the electrical grid that will help create real jobs in the U.S., giving a boost to manufacturing and other industrial sectors.
The same can be said for tax reform. What good are temporary tax cuts? Why make an investment that the law will just take back in a few years?
When you break it down, not having a stable rule of law — indeed, having one that punishes entire sectors of the economy — is a death knell for the economy. In that context, it is little wonder the Obama economy was so lackluster, being the first administration unable to top 3 percent growth in a single year.
Since when do the American people have to take a backseat to regulators and the radical environmental lobby?
To get back on track, Congress needs to inject certainty back into the mix. It should be a bipartisan issue. Unfortunately, to get it done in the current environment, a stand-alone bill stands almost no chance in the Senate with its 60-vote threshold for passage.
Therefore, Congress should look to permanently defund these types of regulations in the upcoming omnibus spending bill that will be completed in December. And then just make it a point to reup the defund every year after that until a Senatorial supermajority can be crafted to get 60 votes or the legislative filibuster is simply eliminated.
The alternative is for dueling Democrat and Republican administrations to play whack-a-mole, adding and taking away job-killing regulations like the Clean Power Plan — wrecking the economy in the process. A stable rule of law that favors economic growth and job creation can fix that, but requires a bipartisan growth consensus that sadly is nowhere to be found.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following article from Circa<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u9-73ga0e03/>, Sara Carter explain the controversial Uranium One deal and the potential bribery involved with the Clintons:
[circa.PNG]
A Russian nuclear firm under FBI investigation was allowed to purchase US uranium supply
By Sara A. Carter
Fifteen months before the 13 members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, approved the sale of the Canadian company Uranium One to Russia’s nuclear arm giant Rosatom, the FBI began investigating persons who were connected to the Russian state corporation. The FBI said in court documents and in interviews conducted by Circa that by 2010 they had gathered enough evidence to prove that Rosatom-connected officials were engaged in a global bribery schedule that included kickbacks and money laundering. FBI officials said the investigation could have prevented the sale of Uranium One, which controlled 20 percent of U.S. uranium supply under U.S. law.
The deal which required approval by CFIUS, an inter-agency committee who reviews transactions that leads to a change of control of a U.S. business to a foreign person or entity that may have an impact on the national security of the United States. At the time of the Uranium One deal the panel was chaired by then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and included then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-Attorney General Eric Holder.
By the time CFIUS approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom the FBI’s investigation had already gathered substantial evidence of bribery and kickbacks against a Russian national, Vadim Mikerin, who was then a top official with Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary, according to court documents. The FBI said while at Tenex, which was located in Maryland, Mikerin was involved in multiple bribery and kickback schemes.
In a 2015 affidavit, FBI officials said Mikerin, "with the consent of higher level officials at Tenex and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities), would offer no-bid contracts to U.S. businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money...” made to offshore accounts, stated the affidavit in support of a search warrant. Mikerin pled guilty to the allegations.
Affidavit in support of an application under rule 41 for a warrant to search<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402ua-73ga0e03/>
The Justice Department didn’t move forward an indictment with prosecution of bribery by people tied to Rosatom, through subsidies and other entities, until 2014 after CFIUS approved the sale of Uranium One, leaving the American public without knowledge of the Russian company’s allegedly illegal actives as it went to procure one-fifth of U.S. uranium supply.
In August 2015, Mikerin pled guilty to money laundering conspiracy involving violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a Department of Justice press release. By the end of 2015, four defendants were indicted in the years long investigation, according to court records and a Justice Department.
United States of America v. Vadim Mikerin - Original Indictment<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402ub-73ga0e04/>
"Mikerin admitted that he conspired with Daren Condrey, Boris Rubizhevsky and others to transmit approximately $2,126,622 from Maryland and elsewhere in the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland with the intent to promote the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations,” according to a DOJ press release announcing the charges against the then defendants in 2014. "Mikerin further admitted that the conspirators used consulting agreements and code words to disguise the corrupt payments.”
United States v. Vadim Mikerin - Final Plea Agreement<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402uc-73ga0e05/>
Condrey was an executive of an American trucking company, Transportation Logistics International (TLI) based in Fulton, Maryland, which was authorized at the time to move Russian uranium around the United States, according to contracts and documents reviewed by Circa. Condrey pled guilty in June 2015, to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Rubizhevsky, a Russian national, who was the president of NEXGEN security, in New Jersey, worked as a consultant for Mikerin and Tenam, according to court documents. He aided in the scheme to get the contracts awarded to TLI, according to the Justice Department. Rubizhevsky pled guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in June 2015.
"A Russian state-owned enterprise responsible for selling Russian nuclear materials, contracted with a U.S. public relations expert in 2009 to provide public relations and marketing consulting services to TENEX in the United States," states a court warrant. "The contractor approached the FBI and received authorization to participate in the scheme."
Victoria Toensing, a lawyer for the FBI informant, said her client "is not only afraid of the Russian people, but he is afraid of the US government because of the threats the Obama administration made against him."
My client was providing information for a couple years before this really got voted on by CFIUS, and here’s the rub. High-ranking law enforcement officials in the Obama Administration knew that there was corruption in this company and that information about the corruption in this Russian entity never made it to CFIUS, evidently, because CFIUS authorized the purchase in 2010.
Toensing said, "My client was providing information for a couple years before this really got voted on by CFIUS, and here’s the rub. High-ranking law enforcement officials in the Obama Administration knew that there was corruption in this company and that information about the corruption in this Russian entity never made it to CFIUS, evidently, because CFIUS authorized the purchase in 2010.”
According to a 2010 press released from Tenex, a Rosatom subsidy, the company had signed "10 -long term Enriched Uranium Product supply contracts with eight U.S. utilities exceeding $4.3 billion and is aiming to expand its operations in the USA and beyond.”
By late October 2010, "Technabexport (TENEX) opened its first subsidiary in the United States,” known as Tenam Corp., which was a part of the Russian state nuclear arm Rosatom, according to press releases and documents.
One of the points of contention for people investigating the Clinton's connections with Russia and the Uranium One deal was a $500,000 payment given to Bill Clinton by the Russian bank Renaissance Capital for a speech he gave in Moscow in June 2010. Analysts at Renaissance Capital, who paid the Bill Clinton for the speech, spoke highly of Uranium One’s stock saying in July 2010 research report that it was "the best play” in the uranium markets. The speech by Bill Clinton and the 2010 research report by Renaissance Capital happened while CFIUS, of which Hillary Clinton was a sitting member, was looking at the Uranium One sale to Rosatom. A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton did not return calls seeking comment and no evidence has been presented the speech payment made to Bill Clinton had any connection to the passage of the deal. Officials at Renaissance Capital could not be reached immediately for comment.
"At the time of the investigation did any of the U.S. law enforcement, intelligence or other agencies involved in the case inform the CFIUS board of the ongoing investigation? If not, why not? If they were informed, why did they make the decision they did to approve the Uranium One transaction? Did the president, himself, know?,” a U.S. official who worked counterintelligence cases related to Russia told Circa.
The bribery schemes included delivering thousands of dollars in yellow envelopes, laundering tens of thousands of dollars in briefcases or wiring thousands of dollars through shell companies through the Seychelle Islands, Latvia, Cyprus and Switzerland to name a few.
During the time of the FBI’s investigation which began in 2009, Tenex was able to expand its American foothold with $6 billion in new utility contracts, according to documents and news reports obtained by Circa.
The case being built against Mikerin in 2010 was under the supervision of Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, then an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general. According to court documents, the case was also handled by then Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is currently the deputy FBI director under Trump. The Department of Justice and the FBI would not comment on the bribery investigation of Mikerin.
Other agencies, including the CIA, State Department and U.S. Department of Energy were also involved in their own extensive investigations during that same period regarding Rosatom, according to several U.S. officials who spoke to Circa. It is unclear what the end results were of those investigations.
"One thing is certain, other agencies must have known what was going on but more importantly, did the CFIUS members?" said one U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak on the matter.
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State and local politicians around the nation also bear a tremendous amount of blame for what is happening. Many cities that have become major drug distribution centers are also sanctuary cities. Cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York are proud to proclaim their sanctuary status and their lack of cooperation with the federal government on illegal immigrant communities that the cartels have embedded themselves in.
The local politician's lack of cooperation with federal authorities has led their cities down a dangerous and deadly path. Somehow the strong links between sanctuary cities, weak border security, and opioid deaths didn’t make the 60 Minutes story.
As for the prescription drug problems, the 60 Minutes piece also forgot to mention the correlation between government-run healthcare and the use of prescription opioids as government insurance programs pay help pay for the crisis. A recent study by Annals of Internal Medicine<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tx-73ga0e05/>, found a scary number of Medicaid patients, many of whom are elderly and disabled, 47.9 percent, receive prescriptions for opioid-based painkillers. That is elevated from 34.6 percent of privately insured individuals receiving similar prescriptions.
The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services released a report on opioids and Medicare. The report stated<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402ty-73ga0e06/>, "In total, 14.4 million of the 43.6 million beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Part D received opioids. Medicare Part D paid almost $4.1 billion for 79.4 million opioid prescriptions for these beneficiaries. The vast majority of these opioids (80 percent) were Schedule II or III controlled substances, meaning they have the highest potential for abuse among legally available drugs.”
Another study in published in Patient Preference and Adherence in 2014<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402tz-73ga0e07/> discussed the link between patient satisfaction surveys and prescribing opioids. In the survey, over 48 percent of doctors admitted to prescribing inappropriate pain medication. Doctors did this because the surveys are linked to a satisfaction score that was used by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for reimbursements. Bad scores equal low or zero reimbursements.
CBS News<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u0-73ga0e04/> even did a story on the link between patient surveys the opioid crisis earlier this year. In case you were wondering, 60 Minutes is broadcast on CBS. Couldn't they be bothered to walk down the hall and ask their colleagues about the issue? Did 60 Minutes or the Washington Post bother to ask anyone at HHS if any of their programs that spend billions on prescription drugs could be inadvertently be contributing to the opioid epidemic?
Then there is the inexplicable partisan angle on a story about a bipartisan bill that passed Congress unanimously. The 60 Minutes report made a big deal out of going to the offices of Blackburn and Marino. But did the intrepid journalists happen to go to Rep. Judy Chu’s (D-Calif.) office? Chu was one of the six cosponsors of the Marino bill<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u1-73ga0e05/>. Did the investigative journalists make their way to Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), another cosponsor of the bill? What about on the Senate side, where Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was a cosponsor<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u2-73ga0e06/>? I wonder why the "nonpartisan” journalists couldn’t find those offices?
Better yet, why didn’t the Washington Post or 60 Minutes go to the current offices of former Attorneys General Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch? If the problem for the DEA began when the whistleblower said it did, that would fall under Holder. If the problem persisted, like the whistleblower said it did, that would fall under Lynch, both AGs for President Obama. I wonder why "journalists” made little to no effort to contact either AG.
Let us not forget, the measure passed with unanimous consent. That means not one single member of the House of Representatives (435) or Senate (100) chose to vote against the legislation. If that is true, then why did 60 Minutes concentrate on Blackburn and Marino?
Could it be that Marino has been nominated by President Trump to be the Drug Czar? Could the recent announcement by Blackburn that she intends to run for Senate have anything to do with the timing of the story? After all, the Washington Post wrote a very in-depth article about the issue last October<http://trk2.publicaster.com/click/k9yjr-c402u3-73ga0e07/> that reads like a transcript for the 60 Minutes piece.
Make no mistake about it. What happened Sunday night was a political hit piece. A run of good news for President Donald Trump combined with a run of terrible news for Democrats forced the mainstream media to step in. They dusted off a year-old story and made it seem like a piece of legislation supported by all Members of Congress was specifically the fault of two Republicans while ignoring the culpability of the Obama and Bush administrations.
In the meantime, the story ignores the real heroin problem that is engulfing the nation’s streets coming from the cartels from Mexico and the city gangs that assist them. Our cities are being overrun. That is the real crisis that the left-wing media continues to ignore that is killing thousands of Americans, proving they have yet to find a low they will not stoop too.
Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor for Americans for Limited Government.
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