DeWine joins effort to repeal controversial drug law

The 2016 law — the subject of a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and the Washington Post – made it harder for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments — a tool which the agency had used to crack down on flooding the market. The measure was described as an effort to ensure that patients who needed access to pain pills had that access.

Now, the attorneys general want the bill repealed. The law, the letter said, “neither safeguards patient access to medication nor allows for effective drug enforcement efforts.”

“We urge you to repeal the Act so that the public is protected and distributors may be held accountable for their actions,” the group wrote.

In a separate statement, DeWine said that the nation needs laws “that enable our enforcement community to hold the manufacturers and distributors accountable for the opioids they have knowingly poured into our communities.”

DeWine in May sued five of the nation’s leading drug manufacturers on behalf of the state of Ohio. Separately, John Gray, president and CEO of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, a trade group representing distributors such as Cardinal and McKesson, argued last month that the law’s impact has been exaggerated and that the law instead “was a meaningful common-sense solution to create a pathway for information exchange between the DEA and its registrants that did not previously exist.”

He said DEA “remains fully empowered to take immediate action against a registrant if there is ‘a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat that death, serious bodily harm, or abuse of a controlled substance will occur in the absence of an immediate suspension of the registration.”

Both Sens. Rob Portman, R–Ohio, and Sherrod Brown, D–Ohio, who, like Ohioans in the House, supported the bill via a voice vote, have voiced concerns about the law, with both saying no one raised concerns about it when it was pending in the Senate. Brown has since written a letter to the DEA and the Department of Health and Human Services inquiring about the law’s impact and awaits a response to that letter.