Purdue Pharma and other pioneers of powerful opioid painkillers probably felt a twinge of regret on Friday when the FDA approved a powerful new opioid painkiller that's 10 times stronger than fentanyl - the deadly synthetic opioid that's been blamed for the record number of drug overdose deaths recorded in 2017 - and 1,000 times more powerful than morphine, ignoring the objections of lawmakers and its own advisory committee in the process.
After all that trouble that purveyors of opioids like Purdue and the Sackler family went to in order to win approval -doctoring internal research and suborning doctors to convince the FDA to approve powerful painkillers like OxyContin despite wildly underestimating the drug's abuse potential - the agency might very well have approved those drugs any way? And opioid makers might have been able to avoid some of the legal consequences stemming from this dishonesty, like the avalanche of lawsuits brought by state AGs.
What's perhaps even more galling is that the FDA approved the drug after official data showed 2017 was the deadliest year for overdose deaths in US history, with more than 70,000 recorded drug-related fatalities, many of which were caused by powerful synthetic opioids like the main ingredient in Dsuvia, the brand name under which the new painkiller will be sold.
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The elite pull the strings while the rest pay for it.
ReplyDeleteHow foolish of them to claim that "hospital use only" will keep the drug off the streets. It won't be long until somewhere in the Far East, someone will be producing it for smuggling to the U.S., where it will kill more than Fentanyl and heroin combined.
ReplyDeleteThey gonna be sorry. It'll be a street drug before you know it. People will drop like flies.
ReplyDeleteThere's no need for it.
Sec Azar have you lost your mind?
ReplyDeleteApparently this drug has been used via injections for awhile, it's only a new way of distributing the drug to a patient (under the tongue) that's new.
ReplyDeleteThis is a drug that is only to be used in a hospital setting. I'm not sure how this drug will get onto the streets with the way it's set up for use.
It's cruel to deny patients with a real need for this drug because people have taken other drugs and abused them. Late stage cancer patients whose use of morphine does not relieve pain comes to mind.
Its all about the Benjamins...
ReplyDelete