Former FDA commissioner says FDA erred in allowing drug companies to promote opioids 60 MINUTES

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Making a Killing –

Feb. 21, 2019 – Dr. David Kessler, the FDA commissioner in the 1990s at the time Purdue’s powerful, long-acting opioid Oxycontin was first approved, says the FDA never should have allowed the drug and others like it to be broadly marketed for chronic pain patients. The agency erred in radically extending the market for opioids despite the lack of studies on the safety and efficacy for long term use, he says. The former commissioner says the label on opioid drugs must be changed to limit the ability of drug companies’ to market opioids. “It needs to be done,” he says.

The change in the FDA’s labeled indication for opioids such as Oxycontin to long-term use gave Big Pharma a green light to push opioids to tens of millions of new pain patients nationwide. “You have a system of pharmaceutical promotion that changed the way medicine practiced and no one, all right, stopped it,” says Kessler, who has been retained by cities and counties suing Big Pharma for the opioid crisis. The marketing led to an over-prescribing of the dangerous drugs and a river of pills fueled the deadly epidemic, as companies were allowed to sell more and more pills at higher and higher doses. Kessler speaks to Bill Whitaker for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT on CBS.