December 12, 2013
General Masto Joins Bipartisan Effort with 28 Attorneys General Against the Highly Addictive Drug
Las Vegas, NV – Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reexamine its approval of a strongly addictive narcotic painkiller Zohydro ER. It is reportedly five to ten times more potent than traditional hydrocodone products.
“There are no abuse deterrent properties for this drug,” said Masto. “I am concerned that without any deterrent properties Nevada may have more instances of prescription drug abuse.”
In a letter sent Tuesday to the FDA, Masto and a bipartisan group of 28 state and territorial attorneys general wrote that in approving the opioid analgesic Zohydro ER in October, the agency created “the potential to exacerbate our nation’s prescription drug abuse epidemic” because of the drug’s potency and lack of abuse-deterrent properties. The FDA’s approval ran counter to a medical advisory board’s recommendation last December.
State Attorneys General do not want a repeat of the recent past when potent prescription painkilling drugs entered the market without abuse-deterrent qualities and without clear guidance on how they were to be prescribed. This created an environment in which the nation witnessed a vicious cycle of overzealous pharmaceutical sales, doctors over-prescribing the narcotics, and patients tampering with these drugs, ultimately resulting in a nationwide prescription drug epidemic claiming thousands of lives.
To read the letter click here.
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