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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

House passes bipartisan bill to fight opioid crisis [thehill.com]

The measure, which passed 396 to 14, is the broadest of dozens of bills on the topic passed by the House over the past two weeks.

[...] Addiction advocates largely praise the measures as good steps forward, but say that much more work [thehill.com] and funding is needed to tackle the issue's scale.

[...] The legislation, passed Friday, includes a range of measures to fight the epidemic, including lifting some limits on prescribing Buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction. The bill also requires health-care professionals to write prescriptions for Medicare beneficiaries electronically in order to better track prescriptions and to allow Medicare to cover treatment at addiction treatment clinics.

China says United States domestic opioid market the crux of crisis [reuters.com]

China's drug control agency on Monday said the United States should do more to cut its demand for opioids to tackle the use of synthetic drug fentanyl, but it vowed to step up cooperation after Chinese production of the substance had been blamed for fuelling the U.S. opioid crisis.

[...] "China's drug control agencies, now and in the years to come, will place greater emphasis on drug control cooperation between China and the United States," Liu Yuejin, deputy head of China's National Narcotics Commission, told a news conference. "But I believe that to resolve this the more important issue is for the United States to strive to reduce and compress the great demand and drug consumption markets of opioids," he said. While China accepts that some new psychoactive substances, including fentanyl, manufactured in China are sold in the United States, the substances are not yet readily abused and trafficked in China itself, he said.

[...] Beijing has taken steps to crack down on the production and export of synthetic drugs, and has placed fentanyl and 22 other related compounds on its list of controlled substances.

See also: What's in the House's bills to address the opioid crisis — and what's not [statnews.com]

It also remains unclear exactly how and when the Senate will craft its own legislation. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the legislation was a priority but acknowledged the Senate does not have a specific timeline for opioids legislation.

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