I have never been too keen on using war rhetoric to describe any activities other than actual war, and I was struck by the phrase quoted in the title of this post appearing toward the end of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' latest speech about the opioid epidemic. Here is an excerpt from the close of the speech as prepared for delivery to law enforcement in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:
[T]o help fight the overprescribing of opioid painkillers, I announced last month that we will allocate new resources to find and prosecute the fraudsters who help flood our streets with drugs.The first new resource is a data analytics program at the Department called the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit. This team will help us find the tell-tale signs of opioid-related health care fraud by identifying statistical outliers. Fraudsters might lie, but the numbers don’t.
The second is that I’ve assigned 12 experienced prosecutors to focus solely on investigating and prosecuting opioid-related health care fraud cases in a dozen “hot-spot” locations around the country -- places where they are especially needed. And one of those will be in Western Pennsylvania.
And, today, I am announcing that we will be awarding nearly $20 million in federal grants to help law enforcement and public health agencies address prescription drug and opioid abuse. This is an urgent problem and we are making it a top priority. I believe that these new resources and new efforts will make a difference, bring more criminals to justice, and ultimately save lives.
And I’m convinced this is a winnable war.
But in order to end this crisis, we must work together. Eighty-five percent of all law enforcement officers serve at the state and local level, and your work is essential to our success. Strengthening partnerships between law enforcement officers at all levels is a central theme of my tenure at the DOJ, and I hope you will help me do that. Each of you has a difficult job, but it is a job worth doing, and a job that your communities are depending upon. And you can know this: you have our thanks, and we have your back.
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