Report Links US Pharmaceutical Drug Lobby to Spreading Opioid Epidemic Dan Alder - InSight Crime
go to original October 2, 2016

Investigation: The politics of pain (The Center for Public Integrity)

A new report sheds light on how the US pharmaceutical industry has poured millions of dollars into an effort to stop public health measures aimed at curbing over-prescription of opioid drugs, indirectly feeding the US heroin epidemic and Mexico's deadly boom in heroin production.

The investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and the Associated Press found that drugmakers employ "hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures" aimed at curbing a drug abuse crisis "that has cost 165,000 Americans their lives and pushed countless more to crippling addiction."

As public health advocates - some of whom had lost children to overdoses - testified in state legislature hearings about the need to regulate pharmaceutical opioids like OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl, industry lobbyists went door to door in state houses in an effort to quash the proposals via one-on-one talks with representatives.

The investigative report says companies spent more than $880 million from 2006 to 2015 on the lobbying effort and campaign contributions, "more than eight times what the formidable gun lobby recorded for similar activities during that same period." Dr. Andrew Kolodny, an advocate for opioid reform, told the researchers that drug companies and their lobbyists "are reaping enormous profits from aggressive prescribing."

The reform groups formed by the families of young people killed by opioids spent about $4 million nationwide from 2006 to 2015, the report says. It notes that sales of prescription opioids quadrupled from 1999 to 2010 "and overdose deaths rose just as fast."



The second installment of the investigative report notes that the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been tracking a precipitous rise in painkiller overdoes for 15 years, "which has been followed by a similar surge in heroin deaths." The CDC began referring to the painkiller trend as an epidemic in 2011.

The report relies on anecdotal evidence to illustrate the connection between prescription opioids and heroin use, citing examples of teenagers who were prescribed opioids after incurring sports injuries and developed addictions. When their prescriptions ran out, they turned to the black market for the pills and eventually to heroin, which is cheaper, eventually dying of heroin overdoses.

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