US announces plan to tackle opioid crisis
"Opioid abuse is driving the deadliest drug crisis in American history. It has strained our public health and law enforcement resources and bankrupted countless families across this country."
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions
UNITED STATES: US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced yesterday the creation of a new task force focused specifically on targeting opioid manufacturers and distributors, and holding them accountable for unlawful practices.
The US Justice Department also filed a statement of interest in a case involving hundreds of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Sessions said the department would argue that the federal government had borne substantial costs from the opioid epidemic, and it was seeking reimbursement. The case includes numerous cities, municipalities and medical institutions.
‘‘Opioid abuse is driving the deadliest drug crisis in American history,’’ said Sessions at a news conference with several US attorneys. ‘‘It has strained our public health and law enforcement resources and bankrupted countless families across this country.’’
Sessions’ announcement is part of a flurry of activity this week at the White House, on Capitol Hill, in a US courthouse and elsewhere that may mark the beginning of an intensified federal effort to address the uncontrolled drug epidemic sweeping the country.
States and cities have suffered the brunt of the cost and carnage of the drug crisis, which killed nearly 64,000 people in 2016 and is straining local emergency and health services. About two-thirds of the overdose deaths were caused by opioids, in particular illicit fentanyl.
This week the White House is holding a summit on the drug crisis with cabinet secretaries, hearings on eight House bills are beginning on Capitol Hill, and the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has embraced the expansion of medically assisted drug treatment – in contrast to his predecessor.
In Ohio, a federal judge overseeing hundreds of lawsuits against drug companies is set to rule on whether the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) must give plaintiffs and defendants years of data on prescription opioid painkillers that were poured into communities across the country. Overprescribing by doctors and that uncontrolled supply of pills are widely blamed for the start of the epidemic.
US President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a ‘‘health emergency’’ in October, but cities overwhelmed by the crisis have complained that there has been little action or money from Washington in the months since.
White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway disputed that assertion, pointing to a US$6 billion funding boost for opioid programmes included in a budget deal passed earlier this month, and rule changes that make it easier for people to access treatment.
Trump’s commission on the opioid crisis has called for a wideranging menu of improvements it says are needed to curb the epidemic, including a nationwide system of drug courts and improving access to treatment.
The administration plans to roll out a campaign that will include advertisements, marketing and educational components. Conway said it aimed to educate the public about the crisis and ‘‘break through the stigma and silence’’ surrounding addiction.
This includes a White House project encouraging Americans to tell their personal stories about what the administration is calling ‘‘the crisis next door’’.
Conway said Trump started the project in October, when he spoke about his brother Fred’s battle with alcoholism.
Sessions’ announcement is part of an effort by the administration to fight the opioid crisis with both treatment and an increased focus on law enforcement.
Conway said the admnistration was looking at strengthening penalties for fentanyl dealing and criminal trafficking, and was looking at making trafficking large quantities of fentanyl a capital crime.
Sessions said a Prescription Interdiction & Litigation Task Force (PIL) would use both civil and criminal actions to ensure that distributors and pharmacies were obeying DEA rules regarding diversion and improper prescribing. The task force also plans to crack down on pain management clinics, drug testing facilities and physicians who issue opioid prescriptions.
The task force will be comprised of Justice Department officials, as well as officials from the Executive Office for US Attorneys and the DEA.
Acting DEA Administrator Robert Paterson said cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors were ‘‘hard, complex cases ... But we’re not going to shy away from looking at criminal prosecutions’’.
In comments to the nation’s governors last weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar stressed the need to expand the number and types of medications available for treatment of opioid addiction – and the number of people who have access to them.
Azar noted that medicationassisted treatment was available only in about one-third of treatment programmes. Unless many more people received such medications, he said, ‘‘it will be nigh impossible to turn the tide on this epidemic’’.
In May, former HHS secretary Tom Price created a firestorm among addiction experts when he said that using medicationassisted treatments was ‘‘substituting one opioid for another’’.
Joshua Sharfstein, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the embrace of medication-assisted treatment was in conflict with the administration’s desire to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, which allow people to access treatment.