BEND, OR -- Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) met with local healthcare and law enforcement officials Tuesday, to discuss the ongoing opioid epidemic. He says finding ways to combat widespread addiction has to include determining how it started, "In a bipartisan effort, we sent letters to three of the major opioid pharmaceutical companies demanding to know what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it. This is part of our ongoing investigation. We're now focused on those who made the drugs, did they know they were addictive?"
In Bend on Tuesday, Walden was joined by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who says the FDA is trying to address new addicts, whose problems often start in the doctor's office, "Make sure that when prescriptions are written, they're written for a legitimate medical purpose, the patient really needed an opioid, duration of use comports with the clinical rationale for writing the prescription in the first place." He believes his agency is uniquely qualified to help combat the crisis with a three-pronged approach, "One is: efforts that we're doing to try and cut the rate of new addiction; two is: efforts that we have underway to improve the technology both for treatment of pain as well as the treatment of addiction; and three is: efforts we have underway to improve our enforcement footprint."