Lawmakers Seek Scientific Review Of Plan To Tightly Regulate All Fentanyl Copycats

WASHINGTON, 11 JULY 2019 (Reuters) - Lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee have urged the Trump administration to conduct a scientific review of a Justice Department-backed bill to classify all illicit chemical knockoffs of the potent painkiller fentanyl in the same legal category as heroin.

The sweeping legislation may “deter valid, critical medical research aimed at responses to the opioid crisis,” the senators said in a July 10 letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Lawmakers and health officials have said fentanyl, which is about 100 times more potent than morphine, has fueled the opioid overdose epidemic.

As prescribed by physicians, fentanyl is classified as a Schedule II drug, meaning it is highly addictive but has a medicinal purpose, typically to treat intense cancer pain.

But chemists primarily in China have created numerous slightly altered versions of the drug, known as “analogues,” that have hit the U.S. streets.

If the draft bill is passed by Congress, it would place all illicit fentanyl analogues in Schedule 1, along with heroin, would means that they are addictive, have no medicinal purpose and are effectively banned.

The legislation is designed to help prosecutors keep pace with criminals who churn out chemically tweaked fentanyl analogues to evade strict Schedule I regulations.

But scientific experts, including some within HHS, contend that automatically placing all analogues into Schedule 1 could stifle research to combat the opioid crisis. They argue that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regulations to win approval for such research are so onerous that they will deter many scientists from applying for needed waivers.Reuters