The DEA is not supposed to be restricting prescriptions, it is supposed to be restricting production to what is necessary for prescriptions so there isn't a bunch of controlled substances being sold without prescriptions. If there is a mismatch, it is always a failure on the DEA's part to keep up.
The DEA isn't restricting prescriptions though, they're restricting production capacity.
Even without all the usual overhead of government bureaucracy its not reasonable to assume a central authority could accurately predict supply needs for legitimate prescriptions, let alone keep that number up to date over time.
They're always going to be wrong with their estimates. Unless there's proveable intent behind them underestimsting, what's the problem?
My reply focused on the implication only intent mattered. I mostly ignored the assertion it would be impossible to revise quotas promptly seemed secondary and was unsupported.
It leads you to an argument for less regulation and smaller federal government because you need no leading. People who prefer more nuance may not follow.
Is intent all that matters? If a person admits to having committed a crime should they be let go depending on their intent? And how do we prove intent, short of verifiable documents with a person stating their motives prior to actually doing it?
I.e. do we have evidence the DEA purposely underestimated, and that they did it to harm individuals by making it harder to fill legal prescriptioms?
> I mostly ignored the assertion it would be impossible to revise quotas promptly seemed secondary and was unsupported.
I honestly just didn't think support was needed with regards to the slow, inefficient process of our federal government. We only attempt to run the national census once every 10 years and do a piss poor job at it. The IRS, which is literally responsible for a enforcing a primary revenue driver for the government, can't manage to catch blatant (rhoguh elaborate) tax evasion by corporations and the rich. The FAA asked Boeing how safe their new plane was and was months late grounding the Max after an obvious issue.
The list can go on, but suffice it to say there are plenty of examples where entities in our federal government completely failed to regulate the very industries they were responsible for and seemed to be the last to know when things weren't working.
I'm not wvwn trying to defend the DEA here. I simply don't get what we could expect them to do if thwybare tasked with keeping supply inoine with demand without underestimating at all. That's an impossible needle to thread and seems to shows that granting that power to them is only a losing scenario.
Error is unavoidable, the problem is that they are erring on the wrong side and not fixing their mistake in a timely manner.
Estimates should include some factor of safety so they are still adequate even with the error, and they should be regularly reevaluated so that discrepancies do not persist long enough to result in production shortages. As previously noted, the DEA's restrictions have been significantly too low for years.
I'll throw this on my "smaller government" pile :)
If error is unavoidable and any underestimate is untenable, the regulation isn't feasible and the DEA (and the federal government in general) simply shouldn't have this power.
Isn't that a federal government problem in general though? When was the last time they actually responded quickly to something without drastically over or underestimating the response needed?
