OxyContin approval for kids sets a dangerous new precedent

FDA approves deadly painkiller for fifth-graders

Forget trying to win the war on drugs — the FDA is practically giving heroin to fifth-graders!

It’s hard to imagine — and I almost can’t believe I’m typing this — but the agency has just approved the killer pain med OxyContin for kids as young as 11 years old.

This is the same addictive OxyContin that’s become a popular street drug because it affects your brain just like heroin. The same OxyContin that’s killing thousands of people a year in overdoses, in what even the CDC has called an epidemic.

But before you string up the shameless drug company — Purdue Pharma — that’s trying to foist this poison on our kids and grandkids, there’s one shocking fact you need to know.

Our government basically paid them $1.5 billion to do it.

‘Misuse, abuse and harm’Purdue Pharma certainly didn’t need the money. The company is owned by the Sackler family — one of the richest in America — and has raked in $35 billion in blood money from OxyContin sales over the years.

But when the FDA offered Purdue $1.5 billion to test its dangerous pill on innocent kids, it did what any greedy drug company would do.

It grabbed the cash with both fists.

Believe it or not, most of the prescription medications that children get today have actually never been tested on kids. And when you see the damage that these drugs do to adults, you can understand why.

So the FDA actually offers an incentive to drugmakers to test their meds on pediatric patients. I’m talking about any meds — including a proven killer like OxyContin.

Just for running some clinical trials on kids, Purdue got six extra months of patent protection on OxyContin — and that’s worth at least $1.5 billion to the company.

So it was a no-brainer for Purdue to line up some desperate kids in terrible pain to conduct the study. It was something that Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of a medical ethics division at NYU Langone Medical Center, called a “raw, crass, last-gasp exploitation of a drug that has been synonymous with misuse, abuse and harm.”

But it looks like Dr. Kaplan — and the rest of us — were worried for nothing. Because when the scientists at Purdue crunched the data, they decided their drug — the same one that has grown men and women dropping like flies — was as safe as mother’s milk for kids.

And if you can’t trust Purdue, who can you trust? This is the same company that once had to pay $600 million for lying to doctors and telling them OxyContin was low-risk and not very addictive.

Getting your advice on OxyContin’s safety from Purdue is a little like getting information on the health benefits of fried chicken from Colonel Sanders.

But the FDA didn’t just accept Purdue’s study — it actually approved OxyContin for fifth-graders without ever convening an outside panel of experts to offer objective advice.

And there’s only one reason for that. Both the FDA and Purdue knew that no scientist in his right mind would sign off on giving these drugs to kids who haven’t even attended their first day of middle school yet.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, points out that OxyContin can wreak havoc on a child’s endocrine system, which can cause serious and life-long developmental delays.
Worse still, putting kids on the drug, especially for short-term use, will increase their risk of addiction. Kids, Dr. Kolodny says, are at a much higher risk for drug dependence, as their brains don’t fully mature until they reach the age of 25.

The FDA is actually giving Purdue four years — until 2019 — before it has to submit a report on injuries, overdoses and medication errors in kids taking OxyContin. And you can bet the company will do everything it can from keeping this coming trainwreck from ever being made public.

In the meantime, don’t let your kids or grandkids within a country mile of this drug. Because by the time 2019 rolls around, there are going to be an awful lot of children either dead or addicted thanks to prescriptions for OxyContin.

And Purdue’s $1.5 billion will be sitting in the bank, earning interest.

Sources:

“FDA approves OxyContin for kids 11 to 16” Liz Szabo, August 14, 2015, USA Today, usatoday.com

“OxyContin sales put Purdue’s Sackler family on Forbes rich list” Carly Hefland, July 6, 2015, FiercePharma, fiercepharma.com