The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released an official statement to the mainstream media on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, with “clarification” regarding their 2016 Guidelines for Opioid Prescribing for Treatment of Chronic Non Cancer Pain.
To wit, they caution against forced tapers, discontinuing opioid therapy in patients who have been on opioid therapy long term, and against lowering doses to low levels that cause patient harms.
In perusing the linked page to the 2016 guidelines, which this author has visited several times a week for well over a year, it must be noted that the page has undergone an overhaul in the new year. It is much more “friendly” than previously, with kinder language, explanations contained on the landing page and site links that were not there before. One can use the Internet archive to look back and see the changes from previous.
CDC has announced they are in line with FDA regarding forced tapering of opioid medication in long time opioid therapy patients. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. What is a surprise is that any announcement is being made at all in this fashion by the CDC.
FDA is the authority in the Unites States regarding all prescribed medication and rules governing medication.
FDA issues the rules all other agencies must follow. No agency outranks FDA.
Astonishingly, the CDC guidelines have been adhered to across the board without a single document or rubber stamp from FDA.
This is a grave matter to consider. One that all Americans should really think about.
The regulatory agency that issues all rules regarding medications never once issued any official permissions from their agency for the wholesale application of the CDC guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.
Yet, the United States has across the board clinically applied these harmful guidelines. What does this say about authority?
To include over 30 states basing erroneous and extremely harmful legislation upon these guidelines. What does this mean? We need to really think about this.
It appears that some of the stakeholders ignored the hierarchy of government agency structure in their zeal to throttle opioids — even in the face of all that data we showed them time and again proving that what we were saying was true, that painful disease patients were not causing their “opioid crisis”.
They completely ignored the authority of the FDA.
It appears that those in the know counted on “Everyday Joe American” not understanding the rules around prescribed medication policy.
What is worse, the American public has passively allowed some to practice medicine via legislation in over half of our 50 states… all based on these guidelines issued by the CDC, which were never officially endorsed by the regulatory body FDA.
When advocates pointed out medicine was being practiced without a license, that FDA had never officially adopted the CDC guidelines as policy; they were demonized, ridiculed, and discredited.
What do we have left today?
A situation where an agency that has no business issuing policy statements on any drugs walking back a massively misapplied guideline that was blanket enforced across the United States without approval by the very government agency created to keep citizens from harm due to thoughtless policy such as this.
We must be serious and thoughtful about this going forward.
Why was this patently ignored by all involved?
Why were stakeholders encouraged to practice medicine without a license based on these guidelines, not based on thoughtful guidance from the actual rule making and regulatory agency on drugs — FDA?
It makes little sense, unless you view it through the lens of the population based study discovered by CIAAG and confirmed in DC on April 8, 2019.
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