Sessions proposes plan to limit amount of opioids manufacturers can produce

Originally published by The Washington Post. 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions proposed a change to national drug policy Tuesday by limiting the amount of opioids that certain companies can manufacture each year in an effort to fight what has become a nationwide epidemic.

Under Sessions’s proposal, the Drug Enforcement Administration, which sets opioid production limits, would be able to reduce a company’s opioid production if officials believe the drugs are being diverted for misuse, Sessions said.

Sessions also announced that the DEA has reached an agreement with 48 attorneys general to share information from a database that monitors the flow of painkillers from manufacturer to distribution point to aid investigations. States will provide the DEA with information from their prescription-monitoring programs, which track the prescriptions that doctors write for patients.

The DEA’s database, known as the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, is confidential. But some information that has been released and analyzed is staggering: In two instances, millions of pills were shipped to pharmacies in tiny West Virginia towns. In Congress, a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight panel that is investigating pill dumping in West Virginia has been keen to obtain the database.

Read the full story at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dozens-arrested-i…