Advocacy Group and FDA Advisor Call for a Moratorium on Opioid Approvals

As America continues to grapple with the opioid crisis, nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen is calling for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to place a moratorium on the approval of any new opioid medications. Raeford Brown, chair of the FDA’s Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee and a supporter of the moratorium, said the call for a moratorium is made out of a sense of urgency given the opioid crisis that takes on average the lives of more than 117 Americans per day. Brown criticized the FDA’s response to the crisis. “The mission of the FDA is to protect the public health. In the eyes of many experts, as it relates to opioids, they have failed,” Brown said in a statement. The call, which was accompanied by a 24-page petition, was made in the wake of a changeup of leadership at the FDA. Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is stepping down at the end of the month after two years on the job. Ned Sharpless, the head of the National Cancer Institutes, is taking over as interim commissioner. While Gottlieb made addressing the opioid crisis a cornerstone of his tenure at the FDA, he was also criticized for the approval of Dsuvia, a powerful new sublingual opioid medication. In a defense of the agency’s decision following the approval, Gottlieb said the FDA should consider the approval of new opioid pain medications that can help fill targeted medical needs.