Pubdate: Sun, 27 Mar 2016 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Guohua Li Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n162/a06.html OPIOID USE AND ABUSE Patients and Doctors Discuss the Management of Drugs That Can Be Helpful or Harmful. To the Editor: Re "New Standards for Painkillers Aim to Stem Overdose Deaths" (front page, March 16): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been doing a commendable job monitoring and controlling the prescription opioid drug overdose epidemic. But other federal government agencies can and should do more to address this public health crisis. Specifically, the Drug Enforcement Administration should increase its crackdown on physicians running pill mills, and Congress should open an investigation into the role of the Food and Drug Administration in this completely man-made epidemic and hold hearings on the marketing approaches and other business practices of pharmaceutical companies that may have contributed to the skyrocketing increase in opioid drug prescriptions. GUOHUA LI New York The writer is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia University. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom