The DEA ’s Opioid Production Quotas Threaten Hospitalized Patients, Yet Supply of Street Fentanyl is Plentiful

Jeffrey A. SingerThe COVID-19 pandemic has placed another stumbling block in the way of the Drug Enforcement Administration ’sfutile effort to reduce the country ’s drug overdose rate through quotas on the manufacture of all forms of prescription opioids.The DEA ’s annual quotas have brought production levels more than 50 percent below 2016 levels. But, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency increased this year’s quota by 15 percent, to allow drug makers to respond to pandemic‐​induced shortages. Intravenous opioids such as fentanyl are va luable tools used to manage patients on ventilators—as well as inducing general anesthesia—and the DEA recognized the pandemic would likely increase demand for such drugs. Unfortunately, the agency conflates prescription opioid pills used in the non‐​hospital setting with intravenous opioids like fentanyl and morphine, almost exclusively used in hospitals, when it adjusted the manufacturing limits.This has generated a shortage of intravenous opioids, causing many hospitals to cancel or delay necessary procedures and has jeopardized the management of patients on ventilators, according to a July 22report from the hospital policy groupPremier.This is not the first time that DEA opioid production quotas caused a critical shortage in hospitals. I wrotehere about the shortage the agency helped create in 2018.While hospitals and patients suffer from the DEA ’s war on opioids, fentanyl and other I...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 24, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs