House lawmakers are pressing major opioid manufacturers for information on the sales, marketing, and distribution of the substances and how they contributed to the current epidemic.
Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to three major opioid makers seeking documents and answers on the issue. The letters sent on Thursday are part of a larger probe by the committee into the factors contributing to the opioid crisis.
More than 42,000 people died from an opioid overdose in 2016, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The lawmakers sent letters to Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt, and Insys Therapeutics.
In a letter to Purdue Pharma, makers of popular painkiller OxyContin, the lawmakers press the drugmaker about marketing.
“For more than five years after it was introduced, Purdue explicitly marketed OxyContin as carrying less of a risk of addiction and abuse than other commercially available pain medications,” the letter said.
While Purdue told Congress it became aware of the addiction risks of OxyContin in 2000, media reports have found the company knew as early as 1997. Oxycontin was approved in 1995.
The lawmakers want Purdue to turn over a slew of company documents and information on marketing and when it knew about the addiction risks of Oxycontin.
In the letter for drug maker Mallinckrodt, the committee pressed the company about its efforts to monitor sales of suspicious orders. An earlier probe by the committee looked into pill dumping in West Virginia, where small towns were flooded with millions of opioid bills.
The Drug Enforcement Administration in 2011 warned Mallinckrodt about a large amount of oxycodone pills made by the drugmaker sent to Florida.
Federal prosecutors later alleged that, from 2008 to 2011, the company sent pills to distributors that supplied “pill mills” that illicitly distributed the pills to addicts, the letter said.
Lawmakers want Mallinckrodt to release suspicious order reports the company gave to the DEA and wants information on meetings with DEA officials.
The lawmakers want the third drugmaker, Insys, to turn over information on an alleged kickback scheme to boost sales for a spray of fentanyl, a powerful opioid.
All of the companies are facing lawsuits from numerous states over marketing, sales, and other matters regarding the opioid epidemic.
Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Frank Pallone, D-N.J.; Gregg Harper, R-Miss.; Diana Degette, D-Colo.; Morgan Griffith, R-Va.; and Kathy Castor, D-Fla., signed the letters.
Walden is the chairman of the committee and Pallone is the top Democrat.
