Panel Recommends Ban on 2 Popular Painkillers - NYTimes.com
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: June 30, 2009
ADELPHI, Md. — A federal advisory panel voted narrowly on Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver.
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The agency is not required to [....] follow the recommendations of its advisory panels, but it usually does.
Unfortunately
But they voted 20 to 17 against limiting the number of pills allowed in each bottle, with members saying such a limit would probably have little effect and could hurt rural and poor patients. Bottles of 1,000 pills are often sold at discount chains.
‘We have no data to show that people who overdose shop at Costco,’ said Dr. Edward Covington, a panel member from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
IIRC, the problem is that their parents do. The patients who intentionally take handfuls of acetaminophen are usually teenage girls in initial and not-fully-serious suicide attempts. Few other countries allow the sort of bulk packaging we do.
Finally, I find this very hard to bellieve:
Still, some doctors predicted that the recommendation would put extra burdens on physicians and patients.
‘More people will be suffering from pain,’ said Dr. Sean Mackey, chief of pain management at Stanford University Medical School. ‘More people will be seeing their doctors more frequently and running up health care costs.’
The recommendation doesn't attempt to ban acetominophen. And, the 1,000 pill bottles are relatively cheap, so its hard to see too much of an increase in marginal cost if a patient will also have to buy the acetominophen OTC.
Moreover, why would more people go to the doctor because they have to get their oxycodone and acetominophen separately? Why would they go more frequently?
Indeed,
“It ties the doctor’s hands when you put the two drugs together,” said Dr. Scott M. Fishman, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, Davis, and a former president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. “There’s no reason you can’t get the same effect by using them separately.” Dr. Fisher said the combinations were prescribed so often for the sake of convenience, but added, “When you’re using controlled substances, you want to err on the side of safety rather than convenience.”
Fingers crossed that the FDA will follow the recommendation....
