Trump Administration Must Stop Flooding Market With Opioids Amid Epidemic - Advisory Panel

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd March, 2019) The Trump administration must halt the approval of dangerous opioids that are fueling a nationwide overdose crisis, US food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel chair, Dr. Raeford Brown, said in a letter.

"We demand a moratorium on the approval of opioids out of a sense of urgency, after repeatedly attempting to provide insights concerning the opioid crisis to the principals of the FDA. Tragically, they have not listened," Brown said on Thursday. "The mission of the FDA is to protect the public health. In the eyes of many experts, as it relates to opioids, they have failed."

Brown, who chairs the Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee, joined Public Citizen in a letter to the US Health and Human Services Department calling on the FDA to prevent "additional dangerous, approved opioids from flooding the market.

" According to the letter, the Trump administration's FDA is partly responsible for the overdose crisis.

"Although we acknowledge that there are many other parties who are complicit in the deadly US prescription opioid epidemic, including the pharmaceutical industry itself, wholesale distributors of prescription opioids, and industry-influenced or inadequately educated physicians, it is beyond question that the FDA is also culpable," the letter said.

President Donald Trump has made fighting opioids a key objective of his administration. Earlier this week, Trump administration officials during a conference call applauded the success of the White House plan to combat the opioid epidemic. White House aide Kellyanne Conway told reporters that overdose deaths grew by only ten percent during Trump's first year as opposed to 22 percent the year before.