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ORIGINAL: CarltheDom

Seriously? This is news? Has there been any time since WWI when Congress and the drug industry haven't been in collusion?

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ORIGINAL: MercTech

The 2016 legislation was bit of bureaucratic vomit that made it extremely hard for those in chronic pain such as those with arthritis to get the medication they need to remain functional and contributing to society. At the same time; it created an even bigger market for illicit opioids.

Opioids are easy. With marijuana being legalized; the secret grow houses are shifting to poppies. So a flood of cheap opioids.

Manic increases of controls on prescription medications are NOT needed and it is about time to back off on silly controls that provide no benefit. But, that is easy low hanging fruit to make problems for the law abiding. That way you can claim you are doing something instead of ignoring the unlawful opioid market.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MercTech

Hearing what sounds like a misconception.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, is tasked with enforcing regulations pertaining to importing and sales of drugs on the controlled list. Medical use, legal use of drugs, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The only time DEA is getting into FDA regulated drug use is when there is indication of diversion of regulated pharmaceuticals for recreational sale and use.

The DEA has nothing to do with hospitals or prescriptions unless the hospital reports a theft of controlled pharmaceuticals. Importation of controlled pharmaceuticals is controlled by Customs and Border Patrol. The FDA gets involved with imported pharmaceuticals in the certification of imports being fit for purpose.

@Edwird
How is there a relation between legal drugs prescribed by a Doctor, highly regulated, and dispensed by a licensed pharmacy related to illicitly produced and sold for recreational use fentanyl and heroine? It is equating apples and pomegranates because both are classed as fruits in a gastronomic point of view. Or for another analogy, making all gasoline fall under ATF control because it is a component of a thermobaric bomb.
I'm still of the opinion that increasing the draconian controls on opiates used in medicine will have no effect on the recreational market for opiates and just might accelerate the growth of the unlawful recreational opium market.

The law on drug procurement change didn't say you can't negotiate a good price but removed the requirement forcing acceptance of low bid contracts. Do we really need to be using generic Tylenol knock-offs made in Mumbai because the supplier that had a warehouse full bid the lowest? It was several deaths in the late 1980s due to allergic reactions due to a change in the mix of inactive ingredients in Tylenol tablets sourced from overseas manufactured stock that drove this legislation. It seems that using crushed shrimp shells as filler material can trigger shellfish allergies to the life threatening point.

Come to think of it, I don't know if the change to FDA regs passed but there was a lot of talk of requiring the inactive ingredients be listed and approved by the FDA and not just the active ingredient formulation. I know pharmaceutical companies were resisting that as originally proposed as it would force re-certification whenever they changed suppliers for filler material.

The GAO ;and local procurement officers have some discretion on who they contract drugs through now. We traded a potential bribe situation for local decisions in choice of pharmaceutical providers. Anyway, that law applies to the Government Procurement Office that supplies the V.A. Hospitals, PHS Indian Agency Clinics, and the DoD Military Medical offices.