the DEA that decided to crack down twice as hard to make up for their fuck ups with the opioid crisis.
Frankly, the DEA should not be at blame or fault for the opioid crisis. The crisis was a capitalistic creation, where we did not have appropriate regulation on the interaction between the drug designers (those who profited) and the drug prescribers (those who gave access). The drug designers pursued a method to maximize profits by paying the prescribers to prescribe their product and incentivizing them to maximize how much they prescribed. This is no longer an issue in today’s society because we have regulated this interaction via the STARK law and other similar legislation.
The DEA should not have any authority over medical drugs. This used to be solely the purview of the FDA, prior to the DEAs creation, and they did a perfectly fine job of managing this. The DEA was created when we decided to start the war on drugs, which has been an overwhelming failure. The DEA having purview over drugs which are not used in the medical context is perfectly fine to me, but giving them authority over drugs used for medicine feels out of scope and rife with potential issue.