Last week, I published an article about new cooperation between Internet companies and the FDA undertaken to supposedly stamp out illegal opioid sales on the Internet, yet slides consciously into stopping imports of safe, lower-cost medicines. The article talked about the FDA’s Online Opioid Summit, which was held last Wednesday.
That summit was covered effectively (as much as possible) in this article from Tarbell to uncover further proof that the agency is, in fact, targeting online sales of regular, lower-cost medicines, which are imported for personal use. Reporter Michael McAuliff noted that the so-called public summit was mostly closed-door and very secretive. Reporters were not invited. Pharma, however, was well represented.
Apparently, it was the Internet companies who wanted privacy, perhaps to conceal efforts at stopping opioid sales on their platforms to not tip off the drug dealers. It could also be that they are ashamed of bowing to demands to censor content that Big Pharma/the FDA finds objectionable. Time will tell.
To his credit, Mr. McAuliff asks how big of a contributor to illegal opioid sales the Internet actually is. According to a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of illegally obtained prescription narcotics (opioids) are purchased online.
According to staff at the Internet Association, a trade group that represents about 40 large Internet firms, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Go Daddy, 3.4% of people abusing opioids obtain them from online sources. I have yet to find the survey, but will try to do so and write about it soon.
So how do we know that actions taken by the FDA to curtail illegal opioid sales online are being used against safe personal drug importation as well? The best example is the increased numbers of prescription orders being seized by the FDA using funding by Congress that was appropriated for stopping illegal opioid imports, particularly the drug Fentanyl and its analogs. As Tarbell finds, most such seizures are not opioids but regular prescription medicines.
The Tarbell article quotes FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb owning up to this:
“We’ll use [the increased funding from Congress] to interdict more illegal products flowing across our borders, including products ordered online, as well as shifting more of our criminal investigative resources to target these online sales. This is a conscious policy decision by the FDA, and we believe these online sales represent one of the highest areas of risk facing Americans right now.”
Tens of thousands of deaths occur each year from opioid overdose. A small fraction of those drugs were purchased online and those sales must be stopped! However, the tragedy of opioid abuse should not be used like this to stop people from getting more affordable medicines from Canada and other countries.
