An FDA advisory panel voted against the Administration’s plan to tighten restrictions for prescription painkillers, stating mostly that the plan was not stringent enough. While the good news is that the panel wants the restrictions to be tighter, it clearly shows that the FDA does not have the best interest of the people at hand, but instead works for the drug companies. Prescription drug addiction and overdose-related deaths attributed specifically to opioid narcotics such as OxyContin, methadone and others have continued to dramatically increase over the last decade or more.
Today there were more than 120,000 admissions to drug rehab programs in America in 2008 where opiates other than heroin were listed as the primary substance of abuse. The number in 1998 was only 20,000, meaning there has been a 600% increase in those addiction treatment admissions just ten years, yet FDA personnel continue to protect the profits of drug companies instead of working to protect the people.