Capitol Hill, 2013
Marsha Blackburn was a former beauty queen, a first runner-up for Miss U.S. Teen and the Oil Festival Queen in Laurel, Mississippi, where her father managed a steel company. Blackburn attended Mississippi State University on a 4-H scholarship and received a bachelor’s degree in home economics. In 1975, she moved to Tennessee while working for a marketing company, selling educational material. She also dabbled in politics, founding a local chapter of the Young Republicans. With her staunchly conservative credentials, Blackburn quickly rose through the ranks of the Tennessee Republican Party. She secured a state senate seat and became the minority whip in the statehouse. In 2002, she ran for Congress, crushing her Democratic opponent in a deep red district west of Nashville by a 44 percent margin.
In Washington, Blackburn continued her ascent. Within two years, Washingtonian magazine named her one of the three top newcomers to the House. She then tied her political fortunes to the insurgent Tea Party and became a darling of the right. A series of important committee assignments followed in the Republican-controlled Congress, none more consequential than her appointment to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the oldest standing committees in the lower chamber and one of its most powerful. The committee also was one of the largest on Capitol Hill, with jurisdiction over nearly every facet of corporate America—telecommunications, public health, energy, and interstate commerce. The committee also had jurisdiction over food and drug safety, making it one of the most important panels on the Hill for The Alliance and its confederates in the drug industry.
Lobbyists for The Alliance reported back that they had identified Blackburn as a member of Congress willing to take on the DEA. She was one of two potential allies. Ten days after the June 2013 Orlando meeting, a lobbyist for The Alliance told her colleagues that the industry had found another partner on Capitol Hill: Tom Marino, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania. He had reviewed a draft of the legislation designed to stop Joe Rannazzisi and the DEA’s aggressiveness and liked what he saw.
“Rep. Marino’s office is very open to feedback and additional ideas,” Jewelyn Cosgrove, the Alliance lobbyist, wrote in a June 12, 2013, email.
Marino was a second-term congressman from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the home of the Little League World Series. It was a postcard-perfect town along the banks of the western branch of the Susquehanna River, surrounded by the hills of Lycoming County. Marino began his career as a lawyer there before serving as the district attorney and then the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Marino’s tenure as the top law enforcement official in central Pennsylvania didn’t end well. In 2007, he was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had vouched for a convicted felon, Louis DeNaples, who was seeking a casino license. At the time, DeNaples was under investigation by Marino’s office. After stepping down, Marino went to work for DeNaples as an attorney for his business interests.
Despite the scandal, Marino won a seat in Congress in 2010. Like Blackburn, he rode the Tea Party wave that upended the balance of power in the House of Representatives that year. Eighty-seven freshman Republicans were elected, resulting in the party’s largest gain of House seats since 1938. The election toppled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hobbled the agenda of the Obama administration. In 2012, Marino won reelection by a whopping 30 percent margin. Not only was he popular in his district, but his star was rising in Washington, where he was seen as a political firebrand and a friend to big business and the pharmaceutical industry. The nation’s third-largest drug distributor, AmerisourceBergen, was based in Pennsylvania. From his perch as a member of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, its leadership in the hands of the Republican Party, Marino was in a prime position to help the drug distributor and other industry giants.
For years, the drug industry could count on key members of Congress to sponsor legislation or attach amendments to bills to improve the industry’s bottom line, or to kill amendments that could threaten its finances. In the House, where lawmakers face reelection every two years, raising money had become a full-time job. As soon as a candidate won, the next campaign had already begun. Each day, many members of Congress set aside time for rounds of fund-raising calls. The average cost of running a successful House campaign during the 2012–14 election cycle was $1.5 million; in the Senate it was $9.6 million. Money equaled political survival.
Depending on the issue, lobbyists had their favorite lawmakers, but all companies currying favor worked off a similar approach—throwing fund-raisers, dinners at the finest restaurants in Washington, tickets to Capitals hockey games, or performances at the Kennedy Center. Being a member of Congress had its perks. But it also carried a price. The lobbyists and the companies they represented always wanted something in return. In 2013, it was passage of legislation to stop the DEA. Much like the title APCO had devised for its tobacco-industry-financed “science center,” the drug industry created an equally deceptive moniker for its legislation: the Ensuring Patient Safety and Effective Drug Enforcement Act. The three-page bill did nothing to ensure patient safety, nor did it do anything to provide for effective drug enforcement. It was an exercise in newspeak.
What the bill really sought to do was eliminate the language the DEA had relied on for decades to immediately suspend the registrations of companies found to be in violation of the law. Instead of proving that the conduct of a company was creating an “imminent danger to public health and safety,” the DEA would now need to demonstrate that the company’s actions created “a significant and present risk of death or serious bodily harm.” Proving that a company based in Ohio or Pennsylvania was posing a “present risk” to residents of Florida would be an insurmountable legal hurdle, and the drug companies knew it. The bill contained another provision coveted by the drug industry. If a company violated the law, it could present the DEA with a “corrective action plan” before the agency could take any enforcement action.
The legislation was the brainchild of one of the early architects of the DEA’s crackdown on the opioid industry—Linden Barber, the agency attorney who had worked alongside Joe Rannazzisi and Mimi Paredes before representing the drug industry. Barber had built an impressive client list, working on behalf of Cardinal Health and others. The legislation also won wide support from the retail pharmacy industry, including the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, which represented CVS and Walgreens, the National Community Pharmacists Association, and the American Pharmacists Association.
In 2013, as they pushed the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, the drug companies and industry associations began to contribute to the campaigns of Marino and Blackburn. Marino received $9,000 that year; Blackburn $31,000. It was early seed money. Hundreds of thousands would follow. To attract Democratic support, The Alliance authorized spending $250,000 “to engage a legislative consultant (with significant Democratic connections) to actively recruit Democratic co-sponsor.” The Alliance eventually signed up Democratic lawmakers Peter Welch of Vermont and Judy Chu of California.
Patrick Kelly, The Alliance’s executive vice president in charge of lobbying, warned his colleagues that the DEA was “adamantly opposed to this legislation and has made their position known to hill staff, as well as to some industry representatives.” Kelly said the DEA was cautioning that the bill would tie “the agency’s hands to actively and aggressively address diversion and compliance with the CSA (Controlled Substances Act).”
To bolster its efforts against the DEA, The Alliance hired an outside lobbying firm, Thorsen French Advocacy, to help orchestrate a congressional hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. Scheduled to testify: Joe, Barber, and John Gray, the president of The Alliance. On April 3, 2014, the lobbying firm, which was paid $140,000 that year, provided The Alliance with questions for members of Congress to ask during the hearing. The questions were provided to Blackburn and Representative Michael C. Burgess, a Texas Republican who served as vice chairman of the subcommittee.
“This is all so sensitive and anxiety levels are high so we need to have some control over how these questions are shared,” Kristen Freitas, the Alliance lobbyist, wrote to Carlyle P. Thorsen, the head of the lobbying firm, four days before the hearing.
Thorsen agreed. He too wanted to stay in the shadows.
“Pls scrub my name and source info before they are forwarded,” he replied.