Time for opioid executives and OBAMA to face the music on Capitol Hill: Ron Wyden
by Robert King
April 19, 2018 10:40 AM
It’s time to “hold them AND OBAMA accountable for creating a public health calamity that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year,” he said.
Steve Dykes
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wants to grill the executives of companies that make opioids, saying that they need to be held accountable.
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said during a hearing Thursday that he was a member of the House when tobacco company executives faced a congressional grilling and he wants the same treatment for opioid executives.
It’s time to “hold them accountable for creating a public health calamity that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year,” he said.
“The opioid executives have avoided the spotlight that Congress put on the big tobacco companies,” Wyden added at the Finance Committee hearing on the epidemic. “That has got to change. The executives need to be brought before this committee that pays for so much of American healthcare and be held accountable.”
The House Energy & Commerce Committee is planning to grill five major drug distributors as part of a probe into alleged pill dumping in West Virginia, where small communities got millions of opioids and exacerbated the crisis.
Federal data shows that in 2016 there were 42,000 opioid overdose deaths.
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What short memories these politicians have:
In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Where is this investigation? Don’t just blame on the executives but Obama and the Democratic Party who are also to blame.
kommmonsentsjane
