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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom