As nationwide opioid litigation brings to light the inside story of the epidemic, questions are also being raised about the role of the American Medical Association in the crisis, and its relationship with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. An in-depth investigation in Mother Jones suggests that the foremost organization of the medical community had a too-cozy relationship with Purdue, receiving donations from the drugmaker and funding the AMA’s philanthropic arm and pain management education—well after the opioid crisis had morphed into a full-blown epidemic. In 2000, the AMA said that addiction “seemed to occur infrequently” with opioids, and noted that for many patients, prescription painkillers are often the only treatment options that provide relief. The article says this relationship may have violated the AMA’s own code of medical ethics, while also contributing to physician overprescribing that contributed to the opioid crisis.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues its drug policy shift away from the failed “war on drugs” to harm reduction strategies. It is offering grant money to draft model laws that support harm reduction programs and backs removing the long-standing ban on federal dollars being used to purchase syringes, in a bid to prevent deaths from drug use. The change in policy makes some sense, considering the surge in overdose fatalities last year to a record 93,000. Yet while harm reduction strategies, such as safe consumption sites, do save lives and help reduce the spread of infectious diseases, they should only be a short-term measure that eventually leads to drug treatment.
And finally, one of the main components of harm reduction is providing the overdose reversal drug naloxone—but that drug is now in short supply. The drugmaker, Pfizer, has said that production has been interrupted, probably by its accelerated COVID vaccine rollout, causing the worst naloxone shortage since at least 2012, when overdose levels were less than half of what they are now. As a result, organizations across the country are scrambling to provide their communities with information about how to counter overdoses with alternative medications. We need a better production and distribution system for naloxone, to ensure that law enforcement, healthcare professionals, and organizations can easily access adequate supplies of the drug.