Advocacy 

The Trump administration could soon provide more guidance for doctors on how to safely limit prescription painkillers following complaints that the national crackdown on opioids has created barriers to treatment for patients with chronic pain.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb gives a statement on new steps to advance the development of evidence-based, indication-specific guidelines to help guide appropriate prescribing of opioid analgesics.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposes to establish the 2019 aggregate production quotas for controlled substances in schedules I and II of the Controlled Substances Act and assessment of annual needs for the list I chemicals ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine.

While most of us have been preoccupied with opioid-related legislation, the House and Senate appropriations processes are slowly chugging forward, and NIH appears to be well funded in fiscal year 2019.

As part of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative, the National Institute of Health (NIH) will support research on how chronic pain develops and on new treatments to alleviate chronic pain.

In a lengthy public statement issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 9, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb pledged: “While we work to ensure appropriate and rational prescribing of opioids, we won’t lose sight of the needs of Americans living with serious chronic pain or coping with pain at the end of life. They, too, face significant challenges.

Eight senators submitted a letter to Attorney General Sessions Sessions regarding the status of 26 open applications to manufacture marijuana for research purposes.

Christopher Jones, a captain in the Commissioned Corps, tells of his struggle with addiction and his story of recovery to give hope to others.

On May 30-31, 2018, the inaugural meeting of the Pain Management Task Force will feature speakers from HHS, VA, DoD, ONDCP as well as perspectives on pain management from experts in the field.

APS endorses compromise legislation in the U.S. Senate amending provisions of the Marijuana Effective Studies Act of 2016, which removes excessive regulatory barriers inhibiting researchers from obtaining marijuana plants for studies to assess the drug’s medical effectiveness and safety.

In 2016, of the 115 Americans who died each day from an opioid overdose, nearly half were using prescription opioid medications. Studies have estimated that just a 10% reduction in surgery-related opioid prescribing in the U.S. would result in 300,000 fewer people each year transitioning to long-term use and make 332 million fewer opioid pills available for potential diversion and misuse.

It seems like new legislation related to opioids and pain management is introduced in Congress every day. Numerous bills are being considered in the House and Senate.

APS commends Congress for bipartisan passage of the 2018 Omnibus Spending Bill, which gives the National Institutes of Health an 8.8% budget increase, its largest in 15 years. The bill authorizes $500 million for research on opioid addiction, new alternative pain treatments, and pain management.

Lawmakers concluded that the research community was not adequately consulted about this change and that the policy could have “long-term unintended consequences,” including unnecessary regulations and the inappropriate inclusion of non-clinical trials in NIH’s clinicaltrials.gov database.

President David A. Williams, PhD, expresses disappointment with the McCaskill report.

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i) and U.S. Representatives Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and David McKinley (R-W.V.) introduced the Opioids and STOP Pain Initiative Act, legislation that establishes a new large-scale initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand research on opioid misuse, the understanding of pain, and the discovery of non-addictive, non-opioid alternatives to treat and prevent pain.

The House and Senate have recently passed tax reform bills that would significantly harm graduate students and universities, threatening scientific advancement.

Congress is considering a deal to raise the budget caps for FY18 and FY19 for both defense and non-defense discretionary spending. Join Research!America and partners across the broad science community to urge Congress to pass a deal that raises the budget caps to help advance our nation’s research priorities.

President Trump is expected to announce on 10/26/2017 that the opioid abuse and addiction epidemic is a public health emergency. This will free up federal money to address the issue, and ease laws to allow easier action against the crisis.

A new federal outline of future pain research strategies, areas of focus, and topics of greatest urgency has been released to the public.