The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just announced that it will change some rules in an effort to reduce the deaths and injuries that result from the inappropriate use of 24 popular narcotics. As a result, many doctors may lose their ability to prescribe these medicines. A new control program will most likely generate restrictions on the prescribing, dispensing and distribution of extended-release opioids like OxyContin, fentanyl patches, methadone tables and some morphine tablets.

All of these are classified as Schedule II narcotics and they are already restricted according to rules by the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). However, the current restrictions have failed to meet the goals the agencies want to achieve, as many physicians prescribe them inadequately and many patients pay little attention to instructions.

Hundreds of patients die and thousands are injured every year in the US because they were inappropriately prescribed drugs like OxyContin or Duragesc or because they took the medicines when they should not have or in ways that made the drugs dangerous. In order to solve the problem, the FDA will hold meetings with manufacturers, patient and consumer advocates, and the public to ask for advice on how to carry out the new control program.

The first meeting is scheduled for March 3, and no immediate changes in access to the drugs are planned. According to the agency, the 24 narcotics had 21 million prescriptions written for them in 2007, to 3.7 million patients. Even if they are effective in reducing pain, they are also extremely dangerous. Many doctors do not take this serious, prescribing the drugs far too cavalierly. Patients with minor injuries are the most affected by this irrational behavior.

The FDA avoids interfering with the practice of medicine because doctor behavior is governed by state medical boards. However, the agency still tries to provide doctors with the best and most current information, and then allows them to decide how to use it. It’s interesting to see that most of the drugs withdrawn over the last 20 years were taken off shelves because doctors continued to use them in a way the FDA strongly disapproved.

The Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) allow the agency to place strong restrictions on the distribution of certain drugs.  The law that made this happen passed in 2007 and gave FDA a new, intermediate weapon against narcotics wrongly prescribed. A national survey found that, in 2007, 5.2 million Americans aged 12 or older said they had used prescription pain relievers in the prior month for non-medical purposes. It’s clear for everyone that this is a problem that the FDA needs to deal with.