The FDA is Finally Taking Steps to Reduce Painkiller Abuse

Barbara Burks

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The FDA is a strange best. Sometimes people have a hard time understanding their motives, as many of you may know from my assistant’s previous posts on the FDA. One thing that I know they are responsible for is the safety of drugs, but now, they are taking responsibility for the abuse of certain drugs.

I am torn on this issue at the moment and I would appreciate your input. Federal health regulators are requiring drugmakers to somehow reduce the misuse of the products they put out on the market. Now I have always believed that what you do with a product determines whether or not it is defective when someone is injured. If you are hanging a folding chair from a tree and trying to swing, you can’t sue the chair company for a defective product because they could not possibly foresee that use for the chair and protect or warn consumers against it.

So why is it the manufacturer’s responsibility if someone chooses to use it in a way it isn’t meant to be used. I assume if the FDA already approved the drug for sale in the U.S. that it has been rigorously tested and that complications such as addiction and potentially harmful side effects have been minimized as much as possible. Maybe I assume too much.

I really like the idea or tamper-proof painkillers like those King Pharmaceuticals and Pain Therapeutics are making, but those won’t work for everyone. Sometimes people can’t swallow pills and sometimes the duration of the patches is needed. How is a company supposed to reduce abuse in those instances?

How do you compromise between creating effective medicine and creating medicine that won’t work if you don’t use it just right?

If these high-dose opiate painkillers are killing people, then maybe the answer is not reducing their misuse by the medicating population (an impossible feat), but taking them off the market. Find new ways to combat the pain (or old ways, I’m told cannabis doesn’t kill people).

As long as these products are out there they are going to be abused. And not just by the prescription holder. More and more kids are getting a hold of their parents’ or grandparents’ medications. Putting the responsibility on the manufacturers is just going to make the medication cost more and make blaming the pharmaceutical companies easier. What ever happened to responsibility for one’s own actions?

What do you think? Comments are most appreciated. I am always looking for different points of view and counterpoints.