Health security

What I Told the DEA

A DEA document states: “As a result of considering the extent of diversion, DEA notes that the quantity of FDA-approved drug products that correlate to diverted controlled substances in 2018 represents LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the total quantity of controlled substances distributed to retail purchasers.”

The US population grew by 0.6% in the last year, so assuming your specified maximum 1% diversion – 0.6% growth = 0.4% max you should be reducing less than 0.5% or none at all, not 10%. Further, there are national shortages of analgesics and this will only make matters worse, discouraging people to undergo elective surgeries and wind up on social security disability instead. People are committing suicide every day.

What we need is an increase in analgesics to reduce suicides including many veterans who just cannot take the pain anymore, and stop driving law-abiding citizens to resort to illicit street drugs, further exacerbating the fatalities from overdoses. Prescriptions have declined 35% nationally since 2012. What is the correlated reduction in overdoses? Have they decline 35% with prescriptions? We don’t see that in the public domain data. Overdoses are up nationally. Isn’t that a hint that mandated quota reductions are fundamentally misguided? Production quotas force honest law-abiding citizens to seek pain relief from Mexican cartels than from qualified MDs or DOs who actually know how to prescribe FDA approved analgesics.