DEA Targeting ‘Unusual or Disproportionate’ Opioid Dispensers

The Drug Enforcement Administration will focus over the next 45 days on pharmacies and prescribers who are dispensing “unusual or disproportionate amounts” of prescription opioid drugs, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced this week. “DEA collects some 80 million transaction reports every year from manufacturers and distributors of prescription drugs,” Sessions said. “These reports contain information like distribution figures and inventory. DEA will aggregate these numbers to find patterns, trends, statistical outliers – and put them into targeting packages. That will help us make more arrests, secure more convictions – and ultimately help us reduce the number of prescription drugs available for Americans to get addicted to or overdose from these dangerous drugs.” In August, Sessions announced the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, a new data analytics program focused on opioid-related health care fraud.