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FDA approves powerful new opioid in 'terrible' decision
The Food and Drug Administration approved a powerful new opioid Friday, despite strong criticism and accusations that it bypassed its own advisory process to do it.
The new drug, Dsuvia, is a tablet that goes under the tongue. It is designed for use in the battlefield and in other emergency situations to treat intense, acute pain.
Known generically as sufentanil, it's a new formulation of a drug currently given intravenously. Critics say it will be incredibly easy for health workers to pocket and divert the drug to the illicit drug market and because it is so small and concentrated, it will likely kill people who overdose on it.
"This is a dangerous, reckless move," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe senior adviser of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. He questions whether there's need for yet another synthetic opioid when the U.S. is in the throes of an opioid overdose crisis.
Sufentanil is described as 5 to 10 times more potent than fentanyl and 500 times as potent as morphine. Carfentanil is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, but is only approved for the veterinary use of tranquilizing large animals. Sufentanil is the strongest opioid painkiller available for use in humans.
Cannabis and kratom? Exercise caution!
Also at STAT News, NPR, and The Hill.
See also: People on front lines of epidemic fear powerful new drug Dsuvia
Related:
Opioid Addiction is Big Business
Heroin, Fentanyl? Meh: Carfentanil is the Latest Killer Opioid
Study: Legal Weed Far Better Than Drug War at Stopping Opioid Overdose Epidemic
President Trump Declares the Opioid Crisis a National Emergency
Study Finds Stark Increase in Opioid-Related Admissions, Deaths in Nation's ICUs
FDA Blocks More Imports of Kratom, Warns Against Use as a Treatment for Opioid Withdrawal
Opioid Commission Drops the Ball, Demonizes Cannabis
U.S. Life Expectancy Continues to Decline Due to Opioid Crisis
FDA Labels Kratom an Opioid
Two More Studies Link Access to Cannabis to Lower Use of Opioids
"Synthetic Opioids" Now Kill More People than Prescription Opioids in the U.S.
U.S. Opioid Deaths May be Plateauing
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @06:34PM (1 child)
Of course. Some people who desperately need painkillers, who now can't get them, will turn to street drugs. Many of those people will be caught, tried, sentenced, and perhaps even locked up.
There is a vast police system, court system, probation system, and jail system. To keep having a "need" to exist, these systems need bodies to process. Your body will do just as well as any other. These systems are government jobs programs.
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @08:35PM
Plus, the people who turn to the black market are unable to be certain of the potency or composition of the product they purchase. So they become at risk for overdose when they were just looking for pain relief. If capitalism could solve this problem (i.e. Ayn Rand), black markets wouldn't have problems with product quality that lead to overdose deaths. An organized working class democratically controlling the means of production and governance is the only social force can guarantee safe access to quality pain relief drugs.
The manufacture of criminals, such as with prohibition laws, is an artifact of capitalism, and it serves the interests of the capitalist elite who run for-profit prisons, among other industries. Atlas Shrugged is nothing more than political fantasy. Real political change requires a scientific study of history.