Cardinal Health employs former DOJ attorneys and a DEA official to keep its opioid distribution channels open

The McKesson venn from yesterday highlighted the latest problem the federal government claims to be solving: the opioid crisis. And like McKesson, Cardinal Health is another pharmaceutical distributor blamed for contributing to that crisis.

Cardinal is a Fortune 500 company based in Dublin, Ohio that was targeted by the DEA for its continued and unreported fulfillment of suspicious opioid orders to several southern states. Luckily for the company, it was able to retain former Justice Department official Jamie Gorelick as one of its attorneys. Gorelick actually emailed Deputy Attorney General James Cole in late 2011 in hopes of averting a possible upcoming suspension order from the DEA that “would itself cause harm... to Cardinal Health.”

Email obtained by the Washington Post via FOIA

And Gorelick wasn't the only former Justice Department attorney going to bat for Cardinal. The company's chief legal and compliance officer was (and still is) Craig Morford, a former Deputy Attorney General in the Bush administration. In this role, Morford had supervised several agencies incluing the DEA. As a result of their efforts, as well as the well-connected team of lobbyists working for Cardinal, a whistleblower in the DEA, Joseph Rannazzisi claims that the Justice Department became hostile towards members of the DEA who were pursuing the suspension order against Cardinal.

Rannazzisi filed the suspension order anyway. It became clear that more would need to be done to keep these opioid distribution channels open, which brings us to HR 471.

A few years ago, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act (HR 471) to weaken the DEA. It limited the agency's ability to freeze suspicious drug shipments or revoke licenses of non-compliant drug distributors Cardinal. And as Lee Fang at The Intercept pointed out, “...pharmaceutical supply companies were involved in every step of the legislative process — with a drug lobbyist even ghostwriting the original bill.” (emphasis added)

The lobbyist Fang was referring to is D. Linden Barber, who was a lawyer in the DEA's office of Diversion Control. According to the Washington Post, an email from a legislative affairs officer in the Justice Department claims that the bill that would be introduced by Rep. Tom Marino (HR 471) was written by Barber.

Barber then joined Quarles & Brady, a lobbying firm. Although Quarles & Brady reported no lobbying activity in 2015, Barber was working there as the Director of DEA Compliance Practice when he testified in favor of HR 471 before Congress. Congress passed the law in 2015 and it was signed into law by President Obama in 2016. Then, in 2017, Barber left Quarles & Brady to join Cardinal Health, bringing his revolving door revolution to completion.