October 25, 2017 12:22 PM UTC

Cory Gardner Takes Worst of "Opiate-Gate" Fallout?

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• by: Colorado Pols

After we took note this past weekend of local involvement in legislation now blamed for worsening the opioid painkiller addiction crisis in America by making it harder for the Drug Enforcement Administration to halt questionable drug shipments, Denver7’s Blair Miller ably followed up the story–documenting the co-sponsorship by both Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman of various iterations of the so-called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, and taking the story in a somewhat different direction after it appears that now-Sen. Gardner had more involvement, and for longer, than Rep. Coffman in the drive to pass some form of this legislation:

Some of Colorado’s federal lawmakers say they are reviewing the ramifications of a 2016 law, of which two of the state’s congressmen cosponsored early versions, that some say has handcuffed the Drug Enforcement Administration in its fight against drug companies—something that was uncovered in a joint Washington Post-60 Minutes investigation published last week…

Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., had President Trump withdraw his nomination as the country’s next “drug czar” last week after the story published on Oct. 15, which showed he was the primary advocate in Congress for the law, which he pushed for at least two years ahead of its passage. Trump has said he would review the investigative report to determine what further action might need to be taken.

Marino, a former district attorney and U.S. Attorney appointed by President George W. Bush, introduced his first version of the bill, the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, in February 2014 while his hometown area was being crushed by opioid overdoses.

Gardner, who is now a U.S. senator but at the time was in the House, was the second cosponsor of that bill, which he tacked his name to just nine days after the measure was introduced.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who is aiming to replace Sen. Bob Corker as Tennessee’s senator in 2018 and is also under fire because of the investigation, was the first cosponsor.

As Miller explains in a story that’s necessarily kind of dense owing to the legislative complexities, Gardner and Coffman both signed on an initial version of this bill, and Gardner co-sponsored a second version produced after the first caused objections from the DEA. This second co-sponsorship by Gardner is important, as Miller continues, because

According to The [Washington] Post, Justice Department emails that summer from top congressional liaisons noted that the former DEA lawyer who went to work for the drug industry had written the second Marino bill.

Gardner signed on to cosponsor the bill that July 22, several weeks after [DEA agent Joseph] Rannazzisi blew up on a call with legislative staffers, saying the bill would lead to Congress “protecting criminals,” [Pols emphasis] according to The Post, which also reports that the congressional staffers told Rannazzisi they could no longer work with him.

The point here, and it’s a very important one, is that to the DEA the entire effort to pass this legislation “ensuring patient access” to opioid drugs was dubious. Even though Gardner and Coffman are working hard to make a distinction between the version of the bill that became law and the version they sponsored, the DEA didn’t like any of them–“fixing a problem that doesn’t need fixing” according to one memo on an early version. And although the DEA didn’t fight the final version of the bill, that only came after a very tense standoff between Rep. Tom Marino and the agency he accused of trying to “intimidate Congress.”

What are the takeaways from this story with these additional facts illuminated? For starters, it should be a generally acknowledged point that the pharmaceutical industry owns Congress. If this bill had been proposed while Democrats had been in control, it might have also passed on a voice vote–and yes, we might be having a very different conversation about it in 2017.

But it wasn’t Democrats Big Pharma needed. And in the Republican majority in Congress, the industry found all the support they needed. Gardner and Coffman never at any point “pulled their names off” this legislation, they just didn’t co-sponsor the final version. And sure, they have reasons they can cite now, but there’s nothing to indicate they objected in any visible way then.

Bottom line: the campaign ads may need to use precise language. But they will still write themselves.