Pharma Touts Unproven, Million-Dollar Sales Opportunity As Solution To Opioid Crisis
The industry is pushing tamper-resistant pills as the answer to the opioid epidemic that it has been blamed for creating.
The Center for Public Integrity and The Associated Press:
Drugmakers Push Profitable, But Unproven, Opioid Solution
Pilloried for their role in the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse, drugmakers are aggressively pushing their remedy to the problem: a new generation of harder-to-manipulate opioids that have racked up billions in sales, even though there’s little proof they reduce rates of overdoses or deaths. More than prescriptions are at stake. Critics worry the drugmakers’ nationwide lobbying campaign is distracting from more productive solutions and delaying crucial efforts to steer physicians away from prescription opioids — addictive pain medications involved in the deaths of more than 165,000 Americans since 2000. (Perrone, Mulvihill and Whyte, 12/15)
The Center for Public Integrity and The Associated Press:
Drugmakers Set To Gain As Taxpayers Foot New Opioid Costs
Critics say the answer pharmaceutical companies are pushing to address the ongoing opioid crisis boosts their profits while forcing taxpayers to shoulder the costs. Some drugmakers aim to replace ubiquitous painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet with harder-to-abuse formulations that are patent-protected and command higher prices — a plan that could cost government-funded health programs hundreds of millions of dollars in higher medication expenses. (Whyte and Perrone, 12/15)
The Center for Public Integrity and The Associated Press:
Key Findings Of Investigation Into Harder-To-Abuse Opioids
The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity investigated how pharmaceutical companies are using their political clout to push a new form of opioids as their answer to the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse. The pills are marketed as abuse-deterrents because they usually are difficult to crush and dissolve, but they also are lucrative for the industry. (12/15)