Senator Warns FDA about New, Stronger Painkillers
New York Senator Charles Schumer has seen the effects of prescription drug addiction in his state and has vowed to fight it. He warns that a new painkiller promising to be 10 times stronger than Vicodin could lead to more violent and deadly drug store robberies.
In June 2011, New York resident David Laffer was charged with robbing a Long Island drug store of more than 10,000 highly addictive prescription painkillers and killing four people in the pharmacy. He and his wife had been doctor shopping before the robbery in an effort to get prescription pain pills like hydrocodone, which is highly addictive.
Nationwide, more than 1,800 pharmacies have been robbed in the past three years alone. Long Island alone has experienced a 125 percent increase drug store robberies.
“It’s tremendously concerning that at the same time policymakers and law enforcement professionals are waging a war on the growing prescription drug crisis, new super-drugs could well be on their way, flooding the market. The FDA needs to grab the reins and slow down the stampede to introduce these powerful narcotics” Senator Schumer said.
The new painkillers, which contain pure hydrocodone, could come onto the market as early as 2013, with big pharmaceutical companies looking to cash in on the $10 billion prescription painkiller market. At present, hydrocodone is classified as a strictly controlled Schedule II drug under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.
Products that contain hydrocodone and another painkiller like acetaminophen fall into Schedule III, which is less strictly controlled. Some experts argue that because of this, highly addictive hydrocodone has been given to more patients, which has increased abuse of the drug and overdose rates in the United States.
A prescription painkiller that contains pure hydrocodone could lead to more accidental overdoses, leading to more emergency room visits. Experts say that already thin hospital emergency room resources could become even more strained if this new drug is allowed on the market. In 2008 alone, emergency room visits related to hydrocodone abuse totaled more than 86,000, up more than 400 percent from 2000 when an estimated 19,000 visits were recorded.
To learn more about prescription drug addiction, read my article “America’s Growing Addiction” at www.vanweylaw.com.
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The most common drugs found on autopsy in drug overdose deaths are called narcotics, usually prescription painkillers called opioids. OxyContin , Vicodin and Lortab are examples of opioid painkillers. Methadone is also now widely used as a painkiller in addition to its use for treatment of addiction. Another drug commonly associated with drug overdose deaths is a group of drugs called sedatives like Xanax and Valium. Soma, a powerful muscle relaxer is often in the mix.
