 Opioid-related overdoses have killed 400,000 Americans since 1999. That's equivalent to seven Vietnam wars. So it's kind of hard to believe that our government was not only complicit in starting it, but has actively helped drug dealers get their hands on more opioids. And it's all because our politicians have their own crippling addiction. Money. Calling the opioid epidemic an epidemic makes it sound like it was some contagion that we had no control over that only Matt Damon could stop when in fact it's the direct result of corruption. Shitty bureaucrats making shitty decisions. Let's break this train wreck down fail by fail. Fail number one, the FDA. The FDA is an entire government agency with one job to make sure our food and drugs don't kill us, which sometimes, you know, they get confused with killing a lot of us. In 1995, Purdue Pharmaceuticals developed OxyCotin, a drug that is not heroin. It's more of a time-released heroin unless you just crush it up a little bit and then it's basically heroin. Naturally, the FDA took one look at OxyCotin and said, yes, give it to everyone. Literally everyone. They prescribed it for arthritis and back pain and all kinds of stuff. It was not only not intended for, but very dangerous to treat. Within a few years, opioid addiction and death had skyrocketed, which is really weird because the label for OxyCotin approved by the FDA read, addiction to opioids legitimately used in the treatment of pain is very rare. It's not. So the FDA started an epidemic. That's worse than the opposite of their job. It's like if you hired a dog walker to walk your dog and instead of walking your dog, they remove its legs. That's the FDA. Why is the FDA so bad at their job? Well, it turns out they're in bed with drug companies. A recent study of certain FDA drug assessors found that between 2001 and 2010 an astonishing 58% of them left their jobs at the FDA to go work for biopharmaceutical companies. They all stopped walking dogs and they got jobs as dog leg removers. Which brings us to our next point. Fail number two, the DEA. Because the FDA sucks, opioids were everywhere by the mid-2000s. A lot of doctors and pharmacists had essentially become drug dealers. They were just overprescribing opioids and sending them directly to the black market. Enter the DEA, an entire government agency with one job, to combat drug smuggling and distribution. Now, they get an idea. Instead of prosecuting all of these pharmacists and doctors, they'll stop drug shipments at their source. Drug distributors and wholesalers. For example, when 11 million doses of opioids are sent to a single county in West Virginia of 25,000 people, or when a single Walgreens in Florida is selling a million opioid prescriptions a year, even though the average is 74,000, the DEA could say, hey, stop. It's an effective tactic, which is exactly why they stopped doing it. In 2011, there were 65 immediate drug suspension orders. By 2016, there were only eight. Why? Well, it's the same thing that happened at the FDA. Since 2000, at least 56 DEA and Justice Department officials left the fight against opioids to join pharmaceutical companies and the law firms representing them. But somehow, something even more sinister was happening, which brings us to fail number three, fucking Congress. Congress is a branch of government that has one job to listen to the American people and enact our will, as is the custom in this country. They never do this job. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised to hear that in 2016, Congress passed a bill making it nearly impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious drug shipments. Let me say that again. So while Americans were dying of opioids at a rate of 142 people per day, Congress was busy getting more opioids into the black market. The politicians responsible for this bill claimed that they were addressing this problem of people not being able to access painkillers when they needed to. But that year, enough opioids were prescribed in America for every one of us to be medicated around the clock for three weeks. So let's find out who's responsible for this by playing a little game called Guess Who Sucks. Here is Congress. Surprisingly, the demographics are pretty accurate. So first, let's eliminate everyone who didn't vote for this bill. Oh, wow, that's surprising. It passed unanimously. Okay. Second, let's eliminate everyone who doesn't take money from the pharmaceutical industry. Oh, cool. Nine out of 10 members of Congress take drug money. Okay, fine. Let's just eliminate everyone except for the members of Congress who sponsored this bill. Hey, look, it's Oren Hatch and Tom Marino. What a coincidence. The pharmaceutical industry was Tom and Oren's first and second biggest donors in 2016. After this bill was passed, Tom would go on to be nominated for drug czar, and Oren would call for all welfare recipients to receive drug testing, presumably to see if they were ingesting the drugs that he was helping put on the streets. Now we could go through the entire list of cosponsors too, like Republican Marsha Blackburn or Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. What about Republican and finalist on NBC's America's Got Neck? David Vitter. This guy now lobbies for the pharmaceutical industry, of course. The point is our government is failing us. Congress, the FDA, the DEA, they're all too corrupt to do their job, and it's coming at a horrific cost. Our country loses $78.5 billion a year to this fight, which is vastly outshadowed by the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. 500,000 more are expected to die in the coming decade, and it's hard to find an American who doesn't know someone battling the crucible of addiction. This is just one of the many costs of a corrupt and broken system that is failing all of us, and I'm not suggesting that we should set aside our differences and hold hands and blah blah blah. We have a lot of legitimate grievances with one another in this country, but this is not one of them. It's not a partisan issue. It's a societal rot that is sinking the entire country, and maybe just maybe here is where we can find a point of consensus to actually do something together. Go to represent.us and find out how. Thanks for watching. Remember to mercilessly tear one another apart in the comment section below. Thanks for tuning in.