Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wants to grill the executives of companies that make opioids, saying that they need to be held accountable.
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said during a hearing Thursday that he was a member of the House when tobacco company executives faced a congressional grilling and he wants the same treatment for opioid executives.
It’s time to “hold them accountable for creating a public health calamity that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year,” he said.
“The opioid executives have avoided the spotlight that Congress put on the big tobacco companies,” Wyden added at the Finance Committee hearing on the epidemic. “That has got to change. The executives need to be brought before this committee that pays for so much of American healthcare and be held accountable.”
The House Energy & Commerce Committee is planning to grill five major drug distributors as part of a probe into alleged pill dumping in West Virginia, where small communities got millions of opioids and exacerbated the crisis.
Federal data shows that in 2016 there were 42,000 opioid overdose deaths.
