Conscience money could help opioid crisis
People are dying of opiate overdoses in houses, cars and doorways, and the state's new battle plan is going to need the resources for a public health crusade.
Gov. Malloy and the Connecticut Opioid Crisis Response (CORE) Team, led by doctors from the Yale University schools of medicine and public health, have come up with a strategy to address the crisis that resulted in 697 fatalities last year.
Health insurers helped to develop the three-year plan, but there is another party that should be at the table.
To mount an all-out crusade against opioiod abuse, pay for life-saving emergency services, and get the addicted into proven treatment plans, the state and its partners will need the companies that make and market opioids to step up — not with pious plans for future research but with dollars earned in the overselling of painkillers that are far more addictive than the makers have wanted to admit.
A voluntary effort to compensate for unintended consequences would not be a first.
Alfred Nobel found a way to ease his conscience for the mortal damage caused by his invention of dynamite. He put the profits into a perpetual awards program for innovators who improve the human condition: the Nobel prizes for peace, medicine, and life-changing work in other fields.
The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal nations, operators of the two casinos in Connecticut, contribute to the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling for treatment and awareness of gambling addiction.
Neither example pretends that harm can be undone, yet they are more than salves to the conscience. Both attempt to counteract the bad effects and perhaps lessen future abuse.
The U.S. is fighting a man-made epidemic that didn't exist 30 years ago — overprescription, overuse and overdosing of opioid drugs. The PBS News Hour reported recently that Stamford-based Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, had reported $30 billion in sales since 1996.
So who seem like the right ones to help Connecticut save lives and prevent addiction? Who is making the money right here in the state? This stuff isn't coming from offshore drug lords.
Purdue Pharma has a bad reputation for misleading prescribers about opioids' addictive properties in the run-up years to the epidemic. The privately held company pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2007 in connection with its practices, and now, according to its website, seeks to fund a researcher who will investigate ways of "sparing, tapering and discontinuation" of opioid use.
In July, Pfizer Inc., which has less of a position in the painkiller market than other pharmaceutical giants, agreed to a statement of ethical marketing principles. Pfizer is helping Chicago in its lawsuit for compensation for costs of emergency services related to overdoses, The Washington Post has reported.
There are other lawsuits, and even more governments will likely try to recoup the costs of responding to an epidemic of emergencies with a single, traceable, preventable cause.
Why wait for the lawsuits? Makers of painkillers could avoid the legal costs and do the right thing now, when the state's CORE Team urges increased access to treatment with methadone and Suboxone; recommends making naloxone (Narcan) readily available for emergency treatment of overdoses; wants to ensure prescribers of painkillers follow guidelines and limits; and is committed to making the public aware of how big this epidemic is, and what can be done about it.
Meanwhile, Connecticut will be tightening its belt to deal with budgetary shortfalls. If the CORE plan is not supported, it will fail. If it does fall to the state to pay for it all, some other need will suffer.
As the Associated Press and The Center for Public Integrity reported last month, the opioid industry has been spending heavily in this fall's Congressional campaigns. How about spending some of that on grants to prevention programs or for municipal naloxone supplies? Why do drug makers even need to be asked?
Lisa McGinley is a former deputy managing editor of The Day, now retired.
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