| Durbin wouldn’t back down, saying the 14 billion pills went beyond pain management: “We are feeding the beast we are trying to kill.” There’s lots of blame to go around, but DEA decides “to red light or green light production. Look at what’s happened…it starts with your decision.” Does some of the fault rest with DEA, “yes it does,” Rosenberg acknowledged. “Can we do better? We will.” Durbin has introduced legislation to fight opioid abuse. One section of the bill would require DEA to consider opioid addiction when setting production quotas. If annual quotas increase, DEA would be required to justify that in writing, explaining why the bump outweighs the risk of having more addictive drugs available. Opioid death stats demonstrate the ravages of the epidemic. About 47,000 people died from overdoses in 2014, Rosenberg said. That’s 129 every day. About 61 percent were due to prescription opioid and heroin. At the same time the DEA authorizes the production of the drugs, it also tries to take them back. It sponsors a National Drug Take Back Initiative that Rosenberg said collected 1.6 million pounds of unwanted medication during take-back events in September and April. “The illicit drug market is constantly evolving,” he said. “We are increasingly encountering counterfeit prescription drugs laced with fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives, as well as heroin laced with fentanyl.” The number of fentanyl evidence items jumped 1,392 percent in two years, according to Rosenberg, from 934 in 2013 to 13,002 in 2015. “The trafficking of this drug, which is significantly more potent than street-level heroin, presents a significant risk of overdose to users,” Rosenberg said, “and to the law enforcement personnel who may come into contact with the substance during the course of their work.” Durbin said he recognizes the appropriate role opioids play in relief and the need for medicine makers to turn a profit. But, “we need drug companies,” he added, “who, for years, pedaled these dangerous drugs, misrepresenting their benefits and under-representing their risks, to step up. We need doctors – who have been prescribing these addictive pain medications in ever-greater quantities year after year – to step up. “And we need the DEA – which is responsible for determining how many of these opioid pills are allowed to flood the U.S. market every year – to step up.” Read more: [DEA drug fighting plane doesn’t fly, but costs soar] [The color of heroin addiction — why war then, treatment now?] | 