Congress readies aim at fighting opioid epidemic

WASHINGTON – Responding to a public health crisis that shows no signs of letting up, Congress is preparing to move forward on a package of bills aimed at curbing the nation’s growing addiction to painkillers.

A House subcommittee will begin considering more than two dozen proposals this week that would make it easier for those addicted to get treatment, speed up research on opioid abuse and detect and intercept shipments of opioids such as fentanyl into the USA.

The panel hopes to have the package ready for a vote in the full House before Memorial Day.

A Senate committee is prep- ping its own package of bills, which emerged in large part from a series of hearings that included testimony from doctors, public health experts, government officials and families of overdose victims. The committee hopes to complete its work on the proposals in April.

“Our recommendations will be urgent and bipartisan, and they will come very quickly,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

President Trump is scheduled to address opioid addiction in an appearance Monday in New Hampshire.

Trump ordered his Health secretary to declare opioid abuse a public health emergency in October and signed orders waiving regulations and giving states more flexibility in using federal money to combat the epidemic.

The renewed focus on opioid addiction follows a report showing emergency room visits for opioid overdoses rose 30% in all parts of the USA from July 2016 to September 2017. In the Midwest, opioid overdoses rose by 70% in the same period, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 64,000 opioid overdose deaths were recorded in the USA in 2016, the highest number recorded in a single year, the agency reported in December.

“It is a public health epidemic of massive proportions,” Alexander said.

Among the bills to be considered Wednesday and Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health are proposals to encourage research on new non-addictive pain medications and electronically link all nationwide efforts to fight the epidemic.

Other proposals would direct the Food and Drug Administration to set up programs for the safe return of unused opioids, help hospitals establish guidelines for the release of overdose patients and establish centers that would serve as models for comprehensive treatment and recovery.

Another bill, called Jessie’s Law, would make sure medical professionals have access to a consenting patient’s complete health history when making decisions on how to treat that patient. The law is named after Jessie Grubb, a West Virginia woman who died of an overdose of oxycodone pills prescribed by a doctor who was unaware of her history of addiction.

“Collectively, these bipartisan bills have the potential to make a number of meaningful reforms to combat the opioid crisis,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, who is a physician and the health subcommittee’s chairman.

The separate legislative package that will be considered by the Senate health committee in the coming weeks is expected to focus on encouraging research into non-addictive painkillers, stopping the influx of illicit drugs into the country and providing additional funding money for state grants to help fight opioid addiction.

Alexander said finding alternative painkillers could be “the Holy Grail” in combating opioid addiction. “The single best way to reduce the dependence on opioids as a painkiller is to find additional painkillers that are not addictive,” he said.

Lamar Alexander