Opioids are a well known and utilized medication class, and this has ultimately led to the prevalence of opioid abuse and addiction throughout the United States.
Of the 21.5 million Americans who are age 12 or older and had a substance abuse disorder in 2014, 1.9 million had a substance abuse disorder related to prescription pain medications, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. At least 23 percent of individuals who use heroin ultimately develop an opioid addiction.
With opioid abuse and addiction comes the potential for overdose to occur. Now, the life-saving drug naloxone — which is used to reverse an opioid overdose — has seen price spikes in recent months.
Within the last year, greater attention has been placed on the increasing price of maintenance medications or life-saving drugs that are taken by a large majority of Americans. Huge price hikes on medications like Daraprim and EpiPen have sparked outrage across the nation.
Naloxone's price increase came in the aftermath of attempts by the Obama administration and Congress to make this agent more accessible to the public, particularly for use in emergency situations. The prices of a few versions of the drug have increased by as much as 17-fold in the past two years, making the potential for lethal addiction all the more real.
While opioid abuse is recognized as an epidemic across the United States, drug companies still continue to charge Americans the highest prices in the world. In an attempt to curtail the rising cost of naloxone, federal, state and local governments have worked on obtaining deeper discounts of naloxone. While this effort is still in its infancy, officials are making ongoing attempts to make this drug as well as many more other life-saving agents available to specific populations and accessible in those locations where they will prove to be the most valuable.
Similar to naloxone, Suboxone is another agent used to treat opioid addiction. It, too, has been experiencing what some states consider price gouging. Officials report that the makers of Suboxone collaborated with other companies to create an anti-competitive scheme that would hinder generic drug makers, and ultimately will keep the price of Suboxone high for consumers.
As a result of this practice, 36 states have joined together to file a lawsuit against Indivior, the makers of Suboxone, to address this growing concern and rectify this issue.
The advent of these measures and many others can bring about a wave of change, but unfortunately some pharmaceutical companies are also attempting to weaken or remove measures that are aimed at regulating opioids. The pharmaceutical industry is spending money to curtail policies that would place limits on access to opioids or improved monitoring of opioids.
While the pharmaceutical industry continues to fight these changes, it is important to understand the reasoning for improved regulation, which is based on the number of deaths that are tied to opioid misuse. Many of the deaths (60 percent) occur in patients that were given prescriptions based on guidelines by medical boards, and 20 percent were related to low-dose opioid therapy.
The misuse of medicine in the United States is growing problem that needs improved regulations and measures to be in place to ensure reasonable pricing and access for a change to occur. With steps being taken by organizations such as the Center for Public Integrity, the practices of the pharmaceutical industry are becoming known, and this can bring the opportunity for change to occur.
