Drug companies that manufacture the painkillers OxyContin
and Opana are trying to block generic drug makers’ efforts to produce
cheaper versions of the drugs. They argue these newer drugs will not
have the tamper-resistant designs used in making the brand-name pills,
according to The New York Times.
Generic versions of the two painkillers are expected to be significantly less expensive than the brand-name drugs.
Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, and Endo Pharmaceuticals, which
manufactures Opana, produce versions of the drugs that are more
resistant to melting or crushing, which makes them more difficult to
abuse. The companies say generic versions of the drugs without these
safety features will increase demand for the drugs and lead to a rise in
painkiller abuse.
Both companies support state and federal legislation that would
require many opioids to be tamper-resistant, the article notes. The
manufacturers are also asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to
differentiate between drugs with tamper-resistant features and those
without such qualities.
A bill introduced in the U.S. House this summer would require most painkillers to have safeguards
to prevent abuse. Under the provisions of the bill, most prescription
painkillers would have some form of abuse deterrence, such as being more
difficult to crush or inject. If pain medications did not adopt the
safety features outlined in the bill, they would be removed from the
FDA’s approved list of generic drugs.
In December, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by Endo that aimed
to block the FDA from allowing generic versions of Opana. The newspaper
quotes court papers filed in response to Endo’s lawsuit, in which the
FDA called the company’s action a “thinly veiled attempt to maintain its
market share and block generic competition.”
