[e-drug] Statement: Trump opioids plan must rein in Big Pharma

e-drug
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E-DRUG: Statement: Trump opioids plan must rein in Big Pharma
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[It would be interesting to know the extent of opioid abuse in other countries. BS]

https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/trump-declares-opioid-public-health-emergency-it-will-take-more-tweets-and-big

Oct. 26, 2017
Trump Declares Opioid Public Health Emergency, But It Will Take More Than Tweets and Big Pharma Nominations to Save Lives

Statement of Peter Maybarduk, Director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program

Note: News reports say President Donald Trump plans to direct the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare America's opioid epidemic a public health emergency.

A national strategy on opioids must include a plan to rein in the corrupt abuses of the pharmaceutical industry, or it likely will fail. What's important for Americans is not declaring an emergency, but acting on the emergency. Declarations and tweets will do little to curb the deadly opioid push into our communities spurred by Big Pharma.

Big Pharma hooked millions of Americans on opioids through illegal marketing, greed and undermining safety standards. Now these corporations profiteer on our efforts to end the epidemic, too, by spiking the prices of overdose treatments and manipulating safety standards to block addiction therapy competitors. Local health budgets and services are straining to keep up, in some cases rationing antidotes as a result.

Big Pharma created this epidemic. Ending Big Pharma's corruption is a necessary part of the solution.

President Trump has the power to ramp up enforcement and penalties against the illegal marketing of opioids and toughen U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety standards. He also has the power to stop profiteering and prevent treatment rationing by authorizing competition with patented products like naloxone that deliver rescue therapies. He also can negotiate lower prices for naloxone products, as recommended by the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis and a group of U.S. senators led by Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

Or he could irrationally continue to appoint Big Pharma's corporate leaders to run the U.S. government's health and enforcement agencies, and mire us ever deeper in a swamp of corruption and addiction.

Peter Maybarduk
Public Citizen
Washington DC USA
Peter Maybarduk <pmaybarduk@citizen.org>

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E-DRUG: Opioids continued: Canadian report
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Here is a link to a Canadian report about opioids that was released in September of this year:

https://www.cihi.ca/en/opioid-crisis-having-significant-impact-on-canadas-health-care-system

Joel Lexchin
--
Joel Lexchin MD
121 Walmer Rd.
Toronto ON
Canada M5R 2X8
Tel: 416-964-7186
E mail: joel.lexchin@utoronto.ca

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E-DRUG: Opioids continued: Canadian report (2)
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I wonder if leaders of health care in Canada (and other countries as well) know that serious harms from other prescription drugs more than double those from opioids and add substantial costs for taxpayers and the nation.

As more drugs are approved with less and less clinical evidence about their risks of harm or added clinical advantage, and as authoritative studies of phase-1 'safety' trials document how flawed & unreliable they are, why waste money buying newer drugs until there is clearer evidence that they are safer or more beneficial than post-patent drugs on which we have much better information?

Don Light

Donald W. Light
Professor, Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine
"Donald W. Light Jr." <dlight@princeton.edu>