A House health panel has scheduled a two-day hearing this month to consider more than 20 bills targeted at fighting the opioid epidemic.
The hearing, set for March 21-22, will be held by the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee.
Among the bills to be considered include one requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to develop standards for doctors and hospitals to show a patient’s history of opioid addiction, a measure that would allow for research on ways to properly dispose of unused opioids, and expanded opioid research at the National Institutes of Health.
The subcommittee held a hearing on eight other opioid-related bills last week, and another is planned.
Last week’s bills focused on giving the Drug Enforcement Administration more tools to crack down on shipments of illicit fentanyl, a powerful opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine, and expanding telehealth to provide addiction treatment for underserved medical areas.
Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., has said that he wants to move the bills for a vote by the full House before the Memorial Day recess.
Fatalities from opioid overdoses reached 42,000 in 2016, an increase from more than 33,000 deaths in 2015 and triple the number of deaths in 1999. The epidemic, which the Trump administration has named as a top priority, is driven largely by overdoses from illegal drugs such as heroin and fentanyl, and also from prescription painkillers such as oxycodone.
