US health agency accused of bowing to drug industry with new opioid guidance

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been accused of bowing to drug industry pressure after releasing new guidelines that doctors say put lives at risk by rowing back on warnings about the dangers of opioid prescribing.

The latest CDC guidelines have caused controversy after dropping specific limits on dosages and lengths of prescribing from a key summary of recommendations used by physicians.

Kolody said court documents show that the drug industry calculated how much the 2016 CDC guidelines would cost it if doctors followed the recommendations to limit prescribing of high dosage pills.

The latest CDC guidelines, released last month, come as the US continues to grapple with tens of thousands of opioid overdose deaths every year, as well as the consequences of addiction for others hooked on the drugs and their families.

The biggest killer today is an illegal drug, the potent artificial opioid, fentanyl. It was linked to the deaths of more than 70,000 Americans last year. More American adults under the age of 45 die from drug overdoses than in the combined toll of car accidents and suicide.

But prescription opioids drove the US opioid epidemic for more than a decade, and continue to claim lives.

That direct warning is absent from the recommendations in the latest document.

Kolodny said that from the beginning the drug industry resisted official curbs on opioid prescribing.

In 2018, Senator Claire McCaskill released a report detailing how opioid manufacturers spent millions of dollars funding front groups, including to oppose the original CDC guidelines. Purdue Pharma gave $500,000 to the Washington Legal Foundation, which previously defended the tobacco industry, to launch a court challenge to them.

Both Scheppke and Kolodny question that claim while acknowledging that there is a very real problem of patients who were dependent on high dosages of opioids who require treatment for dependency and withdrawal. Kolodny said that drove some in withdrawal to kill themselves but the drug industry has used front groups to overstate the number of deaths and to spin them as a result of lack of pain treatment in a bid to pressure the CDC to relax its guidelines.

Scheppke said that what is required is not weakened prescribing guidelines but better treatment for people dependent on opioids.

The CDC has been contacted for comment.