Christie’s dual roles raise flags
He chairs opioid commission and helps bolster drug companies
When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wanted to convene a meeting with some of the nation’s top pharmaceutical companies in Trenton last month, state economic development officials invited CEOs with the promise of “a good network- ing opportunity.”
In a ballroom in a state office building, 17 pharmaceutical executives met with White House officials, members of President Trump’s opioid commission, and federal regulators who oversee the drug industry, who pitched what they called a “public-private partnership” to address the opioid crisis.
The meeting wasn’t set up by the White House or public health officials. Emails obtained by USA TODAY show that many of the invitations came from Choose New Jersey, a non-profit economic development agency run by a longtime Christie friend and political aide.
A week later, the New Jersey governor invited many of those same executives to testify before the opioid commission — which Christie chairs — to promote their own drugs and therapies to treat opioid use disorder or to provide alternatives to the powerful painkillers.
Those records highlight the unique position Christie holds as Trump’s point man on the opioids: In addition to leading the national response to the crisis, he’s the governor of a state that calls itself “the medicine chest of the world.”
The industry supports 150,000 jobs in New Jersey, said trade group BioNJ, and 17 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies have major operations in the Garden State. Pharmaceutical executives helped bankroll Christie’s campaigns for governor and his work as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Christie sees his dual role not as a conflict but an asset.
“We should not be looking to industry to solve a problem they created. The answer to a pill problem is not always new pills.”
Adriane Fugh-Berman, PharmedOut
“I think that the fact that I have these relationships helps, given what you saw at that meeting,” Christie said in an interview with USA TODAY. “Because they know I’m a guy who cares deeply about this issue and I’m someone they have a long history with, they all came. I think you can be somebody who recognizes the value of those companies, not just for the economy of your state and all the rest of that but also the fact that NIH (the National Institutes of Health) by itself will not solve this problem.”
The relationship has some industry critics questioning whether pharmaceutical executives have too much influence on the deliberations of the opioid commission, whose job is to figure out ways to end the crisis of addiction and overdose deaths from legal painkillers sold illicitly.
“We should not be looking to industry to solve a problem they created. The answer to a pill problem is not always new pills,” said Adriane Fugh-Berman, a pharmacology professor at Georgetown University and director of PharmedOut, a watchdog group that follows pharmaceutical industry marketing efforts.
The commission has had three meetings and taken testimony at two of them. The first featured a cross-section of nine experts and advocates; the second featured 11 pharmaceutical company representatives. Christie said he’s considered about 12,000 written comments. Many of those comments came from people suffering from pain and addiction but also from drug companies.
Christie acknowledged two previously undisclosed meetings with drug companies as chairman of the opioid commission: One was with ADAPT Pharma, the Irish company that makes Narcan, the leading naloxone treatment to counteract opioid overdoses. Christie said he was particularly interested in which formulations were more effective against which drugs.
The second was with Alkermes, the makers of Vivitrol, an opioid withdrawal drug that competes with methadone and buprenorphine, to learn about how the medication-assisted therapies work differently.
The commission — formally known as the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis — has two more meetings scheduled before releasing its final recommendations Nov. 1.
Trump said he’s prepared to declare a state of national emergency to deal with the drug crisis next week. An emergency, one of the key interim recommendations of Christie’s commission, could give Trump broad powers — including the ability to unilaterally set Medicaid reimbursement rates for certain drugs used in hospital and inpatient settings.
The commission’s interim report in July emphasized “partnerships” with the pharmaceutical industry, including other measures advocated by the industry: more federal research money for medicines.
The meeting Sept. 18 in Trenton was private and did not follow the federal Sunshine Act that requires advance notice of meetings of federal commissions. But its existence wasn’t a secret: Christie held a news conference about it afterward.
“This problem will not be addressed sufficiently in our country if we don’t have the active involvement and partnership with the pharmaceutical companies,” Christie said.
The meeting ’s dual purpose as an economic opportunity for the state came to light in emails received by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the invitations came from Michele Brown, a longtime Christie friend and aide who heads Choose New Jersey.