Federal Regulatory Responses to the Prescription Opioid Crisis: Too Little, Too Late?
43 Pages Posted: 26 Feb 2019 Last revised: 23 Oct 2020
Date Written: February 10, 2019
Abstract
This paper suggests that the medical establishment shares more blame for the prescription opioid crisis than many commentators seem to appreciate. It canvasses a variety of ways in which the federal government has responded to the problem during the last few years before delving more deeply into the role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), assessing the different risk management tools that the agency tried to use as well as some that it failed to employ. This paper concludes that the agency should have allowed only a narrowly defined subset of physicians to prescribe opioid analgesics, even though the medical community would have pitched a fit about any such an intrusion on its prerogatives, to say nothing of the drug manufacturers aghast at the prospect of far more modest sales. Greater use of such restrictions on distribution might have worked to nip this disaster in the bud, and it needs more serious consideration by the FDA before the next one comes down the pike.
Keywords: opioids, pain management, drug regulation, medical practice
JEL Classification: I18,K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation