“played a significant role in creating the necessary conditions for the U.S. opioid epidemic”

~ Jason Schwartz

A new Senate report looks at financial relationships between opioid manufacturers and pain advocacy groups:

Sen. Claire McCaskill released a report Monday alleging that from 2012 to 2017, leading manufacturers of opioids gave $9 million to pain treatment advocacy groups, an arrangement the report says “may have played a significant role in creating the necessary conditions for the U.S. opioids epidemic.”

. . .

“Notably, a majority of these groups also strongly criticized 2016 guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended limits on opioid prescriptions for chronic pain — the first national standards for prescription opioids and a key federal response to the ongoing epidemic.” McCaskill’s investigators concluded.

 

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.