by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Aug 9, 2018 | FDA enforcement
The FDA has made it it’s business to shine a bright light on the evils of illegal fentanyl imports, which are sometimes sold online. That focus seems like it’s a good one. Illegal fentanyl imports get into the hands of drug dealers who use the ingredients to make counterfeit, opioid-based drugs. They sell them to addicts who too often overdose and die. I’ve written a lot about the FDA’s crackdown on illegal fentanyl imports being misused to stop imports of prescription medicines on their way to American patients from Canada and other countries. However, something much more troubling actually has gone down over the past few years.
According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the John’s Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the FDA ignored information about off-label prescribing of the most dangerous prescription opioid drugs: fast-acting fentanyl or transmucosal immediate release fentanyl (TIRF). Those drugs were approved to treat the most serious pain experienced by cancer patients. Instead, drug companies encouraged off-label prescribing for patients experiencing lower levels of pain and certainly did not have terminal illnesses.
(more…)
Tagged with: Enforcement, fentanyl, opioids
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jun 26, 2017 | Advocacy, Controlled Drugs, Politics
Pharma-sponsored lackeys are using the hellish opioid crisis as an excuse to bash Senator Bernie Sanders’ drug importation bill, claiming it will worsen the crisis. This is all the more aggravating in light of the role of the pharmaceutical industry in causing the opioid death spiral in America in the first place. High drug prices and opioid abuse, such as lawful and illegal fentanyl use, are both killers. I published an article in The Hill on Friday called a Tale of Two Drug Bills to address this issue.
Tagged with: fentanyl, stop, synthetic opioid
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Apr 23, 2015 | Drug Safety, FDA
PharmacyChecker.com’s focus is on helping consumers find safe and affordable meds online while avoiding rogue pharmacy websites. But what do people do with unused medication? Leaving unused prescription drugs in medicine cabinets at home can leave them susceptible to abuse or accidental ingestion. Unused medication includes those products that you no longer need or that are expired. Disposal methods include bringing medication to “take-back” programs in your community, safely throwing in the trash, and even flushing meds down the toilet – but there are important guidelines to ensure safety.
Medication disposal is a particularly critical issue when it comes to controlled drugs, ones susceptible to abuse, because prescription drug abuse has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. About seven million Americans abuse prescription drugs, often powerful narcotics, such as oxycodone and Adderall, almost twice the number found to abuse illegal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. About 70% of first time abusers get the drugs from friends or relatives, including from their medicine cabinets!
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends following the disposal instructions on the label of the drug. Don’t flush your meds down the toilet except when instructed to do so. Your community will likely have drug “take-back” programs. Call your local government offices to find them. In the absence of instructions or take back programs, the FDA recommends throwing most medications away in the household trash. Mix loose medication in a sealable bag or container with an undesirable substance such as coffee grounds or litter. It’s also recommended that you remove or scratch out any information on the prescription label so that it’s unreadable.
The FDA recommends flushing narcotic pain relievers such as fentanyl patches, morphine, Demerol, Percocet, and OxyContin, among many others, as soon as they are no longer needed because of their high risk of abuse. There are environmental concerns related to flushing medication, such water contamination. However, according to the Environmental Pro¬tection Agency, scientists to date have found no evidence of adverse human health effects from pharmaceutical residues in the environment. FDA provides a complete list of medications for flushing here.
Before throwing disposing of any medication, the FDA also recommends removing the labels on pill bottles to remove any information others might use
Drug and regulatory authorities have recently stepped up options for prescription painkiller disposal to combat the addiction epidemic. In fact, a relatively new FDA rule now allows pharmacies, doctors’ offices, and hospitals to collect controlled substances from consumers. The DEA has launched a drug collection site database to help you find one. The public may find authorized collectors in their communities by calling the DEA Office of Diversion Control’s Registration Call Center at 1-800-882-9539
What about destroying your medication?
There are products on the market for consumers and healthcare providers for disposing of medications. We DO NOT ENDORSE them but here are a few that may meet your needs help you follow the advice noted above:
Medsaway Medication Disposal System
Pill Terminator
Disposing of your medication responsibly improves safety for you, your loved ones, and everyone else that may come into contact with it.
Tagged with: Adderall, Demerol, Environmental Protection Agency, FDA, fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, Oxycontin, Percocet
