For more than a decade, members of a little-known group called the Pain Care Forum have blanketed Washington with messages touting prescription painkillers’ vital role in the lives of millions of Americans, creating an echo chamber that has quietly derailed efforts to curb US consumption of the drugs, which accounts for two-thirds of the world’s usage.
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A cleveland.com analysis of data provided by The Associated Press and The Center for Public Integrity also found that numerous top recipients of campaign donations in OH have been increasingly vocal about the opioid crisis in the past few years. The same applies to other members of the Pain Care Forum – trade groups and dozens of nonprofits supported by industry funding.
The pharmaceutical companies and allied groups have a steady presence in state capitals, enabling them to jump in quickly on any debate that affects their interests.
A joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity has found that opioid proponents are a major part of Idaho’s political landscape as well, with donations from members of the Pain Control Forum a group that touts prescription painkillers as improving the quality of life for millions of Americans making up a huge chunk of lawmakers’ campaign cash.
The investigation comes as the number of overdose deaths from prescription painkillers has soared, claiming the lives of 165,000 people in the US since 2000.
Purdue’s Washington lobbyist, Burt Rosen, co-founded the Pain Care Forum more than a decade ago and coordinates the group’s monthly meetings in Washington. Overdose deaths also climbed at about the same rate.
And the industry and its allies have not been alone in fighting restrictions on opioids.
“We and our members stand with patients, providers, law enforcement, policymakers and others in calling for and supporting national policies and action to address opioid abuse”, the industry group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said.
Iowa is just below the national average in terms of opioid prescriptions per capita and has one of the nation’s lowest rates of drug deaths.
Heavy-duty prescription painkillers like hydrocodone and OxyContin are a big part of medicine in OR, with doctors prescribing them at a rate that almost reached one per person previous year. The state’s drug deaths increased 18 percent between 2006 and 2014, with a total of 5,007 during that period.
New Mexico’s state legislature was deliberating over a bill in 2012 that would limit prescriptions of opioids to seven days, but the bill eventually died.
There were 12,903 deaths from overdoses in IL from 2006 through 2014.
At the beginning of 2012, a state law took effect that limited painkiller prescriptions to a 30-day supply.
According to the report, opioid drugmakers are behind state-based lobbying efforts aimed at peddling so-called “abuse-deterrent” versions of the drugs which may carry the same risks of addiction but “ultimately are more lucrative [than traditional opioids], since they’re protected by patent and do not yet have generic competitors”.
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In 2011, Arkansas legislators approved the creation of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a database that tracks how controlled substances are prescribed and dispensed to prevent and reduce the illicit use of opioids and “doctor shopping” – those patients who go from doctor to doctor seeking opioid prescriptions. The automatic registration will begin next year. The bill, which never received a committee vote, contained almost identical language to measures introduced in 18 other states. Lawmakers in at least five of the states said drug company lobbyists provided or helped with the language for the legislation.
