Veterinarians need to make sure pet owners don’t take their animals’ opioids away for their own use, the Food and Drug Administration warned Wednesday.
The FDA recommended that veterinarians follow state rules limiting how many pills a human would be allowed to have, and that they consider prescribing other medicines for pain that aren’t addictive.
The guidance is part of a larger approach that the Trump administration is taking to reduce opioid addiction and fatal overdoses, which reached 42,000 in 2016. Federal officials have been looking at the complex problem from a number of angles to try to roll back the tide of deaths.
In many cases, patients first get opioids, such as OxyContin, from a doctor, and then, after developing an addiction, switch to the illicit alternative heroin because it is easy to get and creates a similar high. Veterinary offices are one place that owners can continue to access prescription medications that doctors have reduced for humans.
While vets don’t typically prescribe drugs for pets such as Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet, they do provide the painkiller tramadol, as well as the opioid hydrocodone to treat coughing in dogs.
[Also read: Trump signs bill into law funding medicines for animals]
Also, doctors who treat humans write opioid prescriptions that patients must then pick up at a pharmacy, but veterinarians keep prescription painkillers in their offices. FDA urged veterinarians to safely store opioids, to come up with a plan when it appears someone will try to steal the medicines, and to call the Drug Enforcement Administration and local police when drugs are stolen.
“We recognize that opioids and other pain medications have a legitimate and important role in treating pain in animals – just as they do for people,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote in a blog post. “But just like the opioid medications used in humans, these drugs have potentially serious risks, not just for the animal patients, but also because of their potential to lead to addiction, abuse, and overdose in humans who may divert them for their own use.”
Colorado and Maine have laws requiring vets check prescription histories of pet owners, but two-third of states specifically prohibit the practice. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have regulations requiring veterinarians to report when they dispense opioids and other controlled substances to pets, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
In Colorado, 13 percent of veterinarians recently reported they suspect some clients intentionally hurt their pets in the hopes of receiving prescription painkillers, according to a recent study from the Center for Health, Work, and Environment at the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz and the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention. The Washington Examiner is owned by a subsidiary of the Anschutz Corporation.
