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Suboxone Settlement
Suboxone Maker Pays $1.4 Billion to Settle Fraud Investigation
Drug Daily Bulletin, 2019
DOJ Joins Suboxone Whistleblower Cases
Drug Daily Bulletin, 2018
$1.4 billion settlement against opioid manufacturer puts spotlight on generic drugs, treatment gaps
Healio
Reckitt pays US $1.4bn to settle opioid treatment spat
MedicalXpress, 2019
$1.4 billion lawsuit, largest against opioid manufacturer, settles before tria
lHealio
Responses of State Medicaid Programs to Buprenorphine DiversionDoing More Harm Than Good?
Opioid Watch
Insurers slighting claims for non-opioid pain treatments
Pain doctors, advocates urge curbs on “forced opioid tapering”
Nora Volkow on prescription opioids, chronic pain and ‘hype’
Can Virtual Reality Relieve Chronic Pain? A Controversial Pain Doctor Thinks So.
News Roundup: June 8, 2018: Pain Refugees
We Opioids present a unique medical problem, Lewis Nelson told me last week.
Stanford’s Lembke: Most high-dose opioid patients should be tapered down—even involuntarily.
When Anna Lembke first became a psychiatrist, addiction was an area she avoided.
Q&A (Pt 2): Addiction Expert Discusses Hate Mail and Why Opioids are “Lousy” Drugs for Pain
News Roundup: March 30, 2018: Medicare Reg Scaring Pain Patients
Marijuana Boosts an Opioid’s Painkilling Power, Allowing Lower Dose: Study
The evidence of cannabis’ potential value as an opioid substitute continues to mount.
The AMA is on Our Side
Urgent News
At its 2018 interim meeting in Maryland, the AMA House of Delegates adopted a series of resolutions that recognize the mistreatment of pain patients and call for restraint in implementing the CDC guideline – particularly as it applies to the agency’s maximum recommended dose of 90mg MME (morphine milligram equivalent units).
1. RESOLVED that our AMA affirms that some patients with acute or chronic pain can benefit from taking opioids at greater dosages than recommended by the CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for chronic pain and that such care may be medically necessary and appropriate.
2. RESOLVED that AMA advocate against the misapplication of the CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids by pharmacists, health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, legislatures, and governmental and private regulatory bodies in ways that prevent or limit access to opioid analgesia
3. RESOLVED that our AMA advocate that no entity should use MME (morphine milligram equivalents) thresholds as anything more than guidance, and physicians should not be subject to professional discipline, loss of board certification, loss of clinical privileges, criminal prosecution, civil liability, or other penalties or practice limitations solely for prescribing opioids at a quantitative level above the MME thresholds found in the CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids.
Links To Articles:
AMA’s 2018 INTERIM MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
AMA: ‘Inappropriate Use’ of CDC Guideline Should Stop
AMA Delegates Back Physician Freedom in Opioid Prescribing
CDC guidelines are well-intentioned but shouldn't restrict prescribing, they say
DEA War-on-Drugs ‘Failure’
Crackdown on Opioid Prescriptions Called Another War-on-Drugs ‘Failure’
The federal crackdown on opioid prescriptions has led to needless deaths and threatens to exacerbate an epidemic that continues to kill thousands of Americans, warns an Arizona physician.
Comparing government efforts to limit the supply of opioids or opioid prescriptions to what he calls the “failure” of the war on drugs, Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer says the policy “only serves to drive non-medical users to heroin, with increasing numbers of non-medical users initiating their opioid abuse with that substance.”
Singer, in a policy analysis written for the right-of-center Cato Institute, calls instead for policies that emphasize “harm reduction” rather than prohibition.
“Drug prohibition has proved a failure,” he wrote.
“People are dying largely because of drug prohibition.”
He called for policymakers to implement public health options aimed at helping substance-abusers wean themselves from dependence on drugs.
The options include medication-assisted treatment, needle-exchange programs, safe injection sites, heroin-assisted treatment, deregulation of naloxone, and even the decriminalization of marijuana—all of which he said have produced positive outcomes for substance-abusers.
“Though critics have dismissed these strategies as surrendering to addiction, jurisdictions that have attempted them have found they significantly reduce overdose deaths, the spread of infectious diseases, and even the non-medical use of dangerous drugs,” wrote Dr. Singer.
The alternative approach, largely spearheaded by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), not only undermines the legitimate use of opioid analgesics but leads “many physicians to practice in fear,” he wrote.
“Worse, it may be driving desperate pain patients to the illegal market, with all the risks that entails.”
See also: “Are Pain Doctors Wrongly Taking the Blame for the Opioid Crisis?”
Although there have been indications that the opioid epidemic has begun to wane, Dr. Singer noted that preliminary figures released in August show the opioid overdose rate increasing in 2017—mainly as a result of a 37 percent increase in deaths involving fentanyl.
Overdoses in 2017 from prescription drugs actually dropped 2 percent and overdoses from heroin dropped 4 percent over that period. But the reduced availability of common prescription drugs like hydrocodone and oxycodone has been driving up the use of heroin.
In 2015, more than 33 percent of heroin addicts entering treatment initiated their non-medical opioid use with heroin, up from 8.7 percent in 2005, according to figures cited by Dr. Singer.
Dr. Singer, a Cato Institute research fellow, is the principal and founder of Valley Surgical Clinics, Ltd., the largest and oldest group private surgical practice in Arizona.
According to his biography, he served as treasurer of the US Health Freedom Coalition, which lobbies against what it calls “restrictive health practices.”
Most attention on the opioid crisis has focused on its impact on Americans in the U.S. heartland.
But a Washington Post investigation says opioid overdoses have been responsible for a wave of deaths among African-Americans in the nation’s capital, in a development it says is largely ignored by local DC officials.
Cato Institute
