Fla. AG Pam Bondi seeks FDA help to combat prescription drug abuse

Calling for more tamper- and abuse-resistant versions of prescription drugs, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is fighting to make generic versions of popular pain relievers harder to abuse. Bondi and 47 other attorneys general sent a letter to federal officials on behalf of the National Association of Attorneys General asking for tougher standards.

Bondi’s office released this statement Monday:

The letter encourages the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to adopt standards requiring manufacturers and marketers of generic prescription painkillers to develop tamper- and abuse-resistant versions of their products. Today’s letter follows the letter that Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to the FDA in October 2012 requesting tamper-resistant formulations of prescription opioids.

“By making prescription opioids tamper-resistant, we can further safeguard people from deadly prescription drug abuse,” stated Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Prescription drug abuse is on the rise across the country, and prescription pain relievers are among the most commonly abused drugs. Name-brand versions of painkillers such as OxyContin have taken steps to make it more difficult to abuse their drugs, for example by making it harder to crush pills which abusers do in order to inject or snort the drug.

“In our states, nonmedical users are shifting away from the new tamper-resistant formulations to non-tamper-resistant formulations of other opioids as well as to illegal drugs. There is great concern in our law enforcement community that many non-tamper-resistant products are available for abuse when only a few products have been formulated with tamper-resistant features,” the attorneys general wrote in their letter to the FDA.

When abused or used incorrectly, prescription drugs can be deadly. Fatal drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death due to unintentional injury in the United States exceeding even motor vehicle deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Attorneys general from the following states and territories signed onto the letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper led the effort to get state attorneys general to write to the FDA about the problem.

To read the letter to the FDA from the Assoication of Attorneys General click here.

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