But thanks to some great work by the Associated Press, we now have a better sense for the magnitude of malfeasance that has occurred over the last 10 years in the halls of state capitol buildings, the US Congress, the White House, and our federal regulatory agencies.
The articles are here and here and I recommend reading both in full. For those crunched for time, some highlights I found particularly disturbing (in form of "what we've known" and "what's new"):
We've known for quite some time that there are a lot of dollars and a lot of brains devoted to maintaining the top line revenue of pharma companies operating in the pain space. We now know:
- They spent $880 million over a 10 year period from 2006-20015
- This amount is 8 times the amount the gun lobby spent in the same period (read that again... just for emphasis)
- $140 million of this went directly to political campaign contributions, $75 million of which went to candidates for federal office
- Various advocacy groups employed an average of 1,350 lobbyists per year in state capitols across the country
We've known for a while that there were hidden forces behind the scenes attempting to squash public policy initiatives intended to stem the tide of prescription drug misuse and abuse. We now know:
- Back in 2012, when New Mexico came close to becoming the first state to limit initial opioid scripts to seven days, lobbyists got in the way. "The lobbyists behind the scenes were killing it," said Bernadette Sanchez, a Democratic state senator who sponsored the measure. We celebrate what New York and Massachusetts have done just this year, but forget that New Mexico tried it four years ago. In the interim, we continued down the primrose path of opioid over-prescribing. How many preventable deaths occurred between then and now?
We've seen influence exercised among federal regulatory agencies, particularly at FDA. Former FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg consistently spoke about the need to balance access to pain medication for those in need with the public health crisis that is the prescription drug epidemic. In so doing, she often referenced the 2014 NIH report that suggested 100 million Americans suffered from chronic pain. We now know:
- The Pain Care Forum (aka, the lobbying group backed by pharma) spent nearly $19 million on lobbying efforts that led to the legislation requiring the creation of this NIH report
- Almost half of the report authors had served as leaders of groups affiliated with the Pain Care Forum - all of which were supported by pharma dollars.
We all witnessed the controversy regarding the CDC guidelines earlier this year. While the federal government's public health agency worked to develop guidelines for opioid prescribing among primary care physicians, other groups within the federal government were not only questioning the CDC's process and conclusions, but also going so far as to call the draft version of the guidelines "horrible" and "shocking." Who were these critics? We now know:
- Dr. Richard Payne, who voiced concerned about conflicts of interest within the CDC advisory group, was himself paid over $16,000 by Purdue Pharma (makers of Oxycontin) for meals, travel, and speakers fees
- Myra Christopher, another vocal critic of the CDC who openly stated that her NIH committee could not support the CDC guidelines, is a long time participant in the Pain Care Forum and holds a chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics - a chair endowed via a $1.5 million gift from Purdue Pharma.
The most effective lobbying efforts come not as obvious broadsides with clear agendas and transparent motives. Rather, the most effective efforts come with the trappings of genuine concern and the suits of science. And that's what makes them scary.
Michael
On Twitter @PRIUM1
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