Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Senator’s Probe Into Opioid Makers Omits Largest Manufacturer From Her Home State

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. listens on Capitol Hill in Washington. McCaskill is seeking information from manufacturers of the top-selling opioid products in the United States to determine whether drugmakers have contributed to an overuse of the pain killers, with a few very notable exceptions. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

On Tuesday, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) demanded internal documents from drug manufacturers Purdue Pharma, Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Insys, Mylan and Depomed in order to investigate the marketing practices of these corporations and determine if they knew of the dangers their products present. The documents requested include internal sales and marketing materials, addiction studies and contributions made to “independent” third-party advocacy groups that work to prevent tighter federal regulations for opiate painkillers.

However, these five opiate manufacturers represent only 13.4 million of the more than 236 million prescriptions – less than 6 percent of the total market share – of opiates that were filled last year. Noticeably absent from McCaskill’s list is the largest opiate manufacturer in the U.S., Mallinckrodt, which had more than 43.8 million prescriptions for its opiate painkillers filled last year – a whopping 18.6 percent of the total market share.
Upon further investigation, Mallinckrodt’s omission from the investigation seems quite dubious. Based within McCaskill’s home state of Missouri, Mallinckrodt donated 2,500 dollars to McCaskill’s campaign committee in 2015, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/senators-probe-into-opioid-makers-omits-largest-manufacturer-from-her-home-state/226478/

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