Today’s reminder of how the feds data-mine commercial transactions comes from The Hill:

DEA issues first sales suspension under Trump for opioid wholesaler

Details?

The Justice Department said Friday that a DEA investigation revealed that, in some cases, independent pharmacies were allowed to purchase six times the quantity of narcotics they would normally order from the distributor.

Oh, the horror.

I’m imagining a small mom-and-pop pharmacy getting a few new pain-medication customers at once, and that increased business triggering an algorithm, so the regulators smacked down the wholesaler who supplied that pharmacy, because somehow that made sense.

I don’t know what percentage of its sales the wholesaler has just been ordered to stop, but absent any evidence of wrongdoing — and “wrongdoing” doesn’t include meaningless process crimes like failing to feed more paperwork into the federal data-mining machine — I presume that they’re innocent and should be left alone.

Also, if the “independent pharmacies” were selling some pills under the counter, I don’t much care.

Oh, and there’s also this:

But it is rare for the DEA to issue an immediate suspension for drug wholesalers. The order on Morris & Dickson marks the first time the agency has used the tool in six years.

The suspension on Morris & Dickson comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on the distribution and use of prescription opioids…

I didn’t miss the War on Drugs, and I don’t welcome it back.

Originally posted on May 5, 2018.