Preview Newsletter
Opioids
-
White House backs pharma partnership after delaying other opioid panel proposals
Sep 18, 2017 | Politico
By Katie Jennings
The White House has delayed implementing two of the top recommendations of the presidential opioid commission chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but the Trump administration sent several officials to Trenton on Monday to advance a third program — a public-private partnership with the pharmaceutical industry. -
Christie: Drugmakers to work on nonaddictive pain medication
Sep 18, 2017 | Associated Press
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work on nonaddictive pain medications and additional treatments to deal with opioid addiction. -
Christie: Drugmakers to work on nonaddictive pain meds
Sep 18, 2017 | WFMZ 69 News
New Jersey Gov Chris Christie said pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work on nonaddictive pain medications and additional treatments to deal with opioid addiction. -
Christie: Pharma industry to work with NIH on opioid crisis
Sep 18, 2017 | Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jonathan Lai and Don Sapatkin
Gov. Christie on Monday said the pharmaceutical industry will partner with the National Institutes of Health to more quickly find solutions to stem the opioid epidemic. -
Christie: Drugmakers To Work On Nonaddictive Pain Medication
Sep 18, 2017 | CBS Philadelphia
By Molly Daly
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says there’s been an agreement between the pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health to collaborate on addressing the nation’s opioid crisis. -
What Christie and Kellyanne Conway just said about the opioid crisis in N.J.
Sep 18, 2017 | NJ.com
By Brent Johnson
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie and Kellyanne Conway, a top aide to President Donald Trump, appeared together in New Jersey's capital city Monday to champion how the federal government is working with the pharmaceutical industry to combat the nation's deadly opioid addiction epidemic. -
The commission and pharma executives discussed how the federal government -- especially the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- are forming a public-private partnership with the industry to address the epidemic.
Sep 18, 2017 | North Jersey.com
By Dustin Racioppi
Pharmaceutical companies and the federal government have agreed to develop and "fast track" non-opioid pain medication for patients and alternative treatments for people battling addiction, Gov. Chris Christie said Monday. -
Pharma ready to share if it helps beat the opioid crisis
Sep 18, 2017 | Healthcare Executive
By Julie Miller
On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that pharmaceutical manufacturers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are going to work collaboratively on getting new pharmaceutical products to market—products to treat opioid addiction as well as non-addictive medications to treat pain. Public-private partnerships such as this were part of the White House opioid commission’s recent recommendations. -
WCAU 10 News Today at 6am
Sep 18, 2017 | WACU (NBC)
By Philadelphia, PA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/29444455?token=4be20a31-9186-45a3-990a-d02f2c7d6bbb -
Christie, Opioid Commission: Non-Addictive Pain Meds in the Works
Sep 18, 2017 | SNJ Today
By Staff
NEW JERSEY - Governor Chris Christie announced on Monday, September 18th, that new steps are being taken to help bring an end to the opioid addiction and overdose crisis in the country.
Traditional Media Coverage
Broadcast Media Coverage
-
White House backs pharma partnership after delaying other opioid panel proposals
Sep 18, 2017 | Politico
By Katie Jennings
The White House has delayed implementing two of the top recommendations of the presidential opioid commission chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but the Trump administration sent several officials to Trenton on Monday to advance a third program — a public-private partnership with the pharmaceutical industry.
Standing next to Christie, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said President Donald Trump has made the opioid epidemic a priority, which is why he established the Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis in the first place.
“Opioid addiction is a scourge across the land, it literally has touched every state, every demographic group. So we feel that since it’s touched everyone in that way, it is a challenge that should be shared and worn by all,” said Conway, who is a resident of Bergen County.
On Monday, Conway and Christie met with representatives from 14 pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson and Allergan, to continue building a research collaboration between industry and the federal government that was announced by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins earlier this year.
The partnership, Christie said, will "fast track" the development of non-opioid pain medication, as well as new medication-assisted treatment options.
NIH will function as a “clearinghouse” to share information between companies and help identify which compounds in the development pipeline have the “most potential,” the governor said.
Collins said the research would also focus on new overdose reversal treatments, “because there’s concerns that the current methods may not be strong enough,” particularly for people who have overdosed on fentanyl.
Several of the companies represented at the meeting have been the subject of state-based lawsuits over allegations of deceptive marketing practices related to prescription opioids.
Asked about the responsibility of pharmaceutical companies in fueling the opioid crisis, Christie said he "didn't spend any time this morning talking about pending litigation because they wouldn't want to talk about it anyway."
While the Trump administration has embraced the partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, it has yet to act on the main recommendation from the commission’s interim report, which was to declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency.
It has been more than a month since Trump said he intended to make the formal declaration.
Christie has continued to defend the delay, saying he had spoken to Trump over the weekend and that the president "reiterated his commitment to that getting done.”
The commission’s interim report also proposed waiving a longstanding prohibition on using Medicaid funds to pay for residential substance abuse treatment.
Since the 1960s, the federal government has barred certain health care facilities with more than 16 beds — classified as Institutions for Mental Disease — from receiving federal matching funds to treat Medicaid patients.
The Christie administration applied to remove this restriction as part of a comprehensive Medicaid waiver application submitted to the Trump administration earlier this year.
New Jersey, along with four other states, is still waiting on guidance from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as to whether this additional substance abuse treatment funding will be made available.
The opioid commission was supposed to submit its final report in October, but Christie recently asked for the deadline to be pushed back to Nov. 1.
-
Christie: Drugmakers to work on nonaddictive pain medication
Sep 18, 2017 | Associated Press
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work on nonaddictive pain medications and additional treatments to deal with opioid addiction.
The Republican governor made the announcement in Trenton on Monday, shortly after he convened a meeting of the White House opioid commission that he chairs. He also held a news conference on the topic alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
Christie says the agreements with the pharmaceutical companies were a key recommendation that the opioid commission made in an interim report it sent to President Donald Trump in July.
In a statement issued after the meeting, Christie stressed that the public and private sectors must join together to quickly address this "public health crisis."
-
Christie: Drugmakers to work on nonaddictive pain meds
Sep 18, 2017 | WFMZ 69 News
New Jersey Gov Chris Christie said pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work on nonaddictive pain medications and additional treatments to deal with opioid addiction.
The Republican governor made the announcement Monday in Trenton, shortly after he convened a meeting of the White House opioid commission that he chairs. He also held a news conference on the topic alongside White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
In a statement issued after the meeting, Christie stressed that the public and private sectors must join together to quickly address this "public health crisis."
Christie noted that the agreements he announced Monday were a key recommendation that the opioid commission made in an interim report it sent President Trump in July.
-
Christie: Pharma industry to work with NIH on opioid crisis
Sep 18, 2017 | Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jonathan Lai and Don Sapatkin
Gov. Christie on Monday said the pharmaceutical industry will partner with the National Institutes of Health to more quickly find solutions to stem the opioid epidemic.
Speaking after a closed-door meeting in Trenton, Christie said 17 pharmaceutical companies have agreed to share data and, working with the NIH, develop non-addictive pain medicine and new medication-assisted treatment for those who are addicted.
“As this crisis has increased, the need for attention has increased and resources has increased even more,” said Christie, who is chairman of President Trump’s national opioid commission.
Christie also confirmed a report that New Jersey would commit $200 million to help combat the problem. He said those details would roll out later in the week.
An estimated 142 Americans were dying daily from drug overdoses in 2015, “a death toll equal to Sept. 11 every three weeks,” Christie’s commission said in its interim report to the president in May, relying on the most recent statistics then available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New projections, for the year ended Jan. 31, 2017, would put the toll at 175 a day nationwide.
“It’s unacceptable,” Christie said Monday, “and that’s why it’s a national emergency and that’s why the president agrees it’s a national emergency.”
At the commission’s recommendation, Trump last month said the opioid crisis constituted a national emergency, although the president has yet to make an official declaration.
Other recommendations included equipping all U.S. law-enforcement officers with the emergency opioid overdose antidote naloxone and expanding access to medication-assisted treatment for people who are addicted to opioids.
The commission’s report generally got a positive reception from experts on addiction around the country, although they worried whether the president would be influenced by others in his administration, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who have emphasized law enforcement and anti-immigration moves as ways to battle substance abuse.
In New Jersey, observers say that Christie has had a mixed record, and it was unclear to what extent his latest proposals would change that.
“Some of these initiatives are great ideas,” said Frank L. Greenagel, a Rutgers social work professor and drug policy expert, adding that many had been proposed long ago and have since been implemented in other states.
While $200 million sounds like a nice number, Greenagel said, the governor has not said whether it would be divided over one year or five or 10. “Spread over a period of time, the amount is neither impressive nor likely to make much of an impact,” he said.
-
Christie: Drugmakers To Work On Nonaddictive Pain Medication
Sep 18, 2017 | CBS Philadelphia
By Molly Daly
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says there’s been an agreement between the pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health to collaborate on addressing the nation’s opioid crisis.
Christie made the announcement in Trenton on Monday, shortly after he convened a meeting of the White House opioid commission that he chairs.
The governor says the heads of the major pharmaceutical companies and the director of the National Institutes of Health have agreed to work together.
“One, to help to develop new non-opioid pain medication, and to put that on a fast track in partnership with NIH,” Christie said. “And secondly, to develop additional medication-assisted treatment for those folks who are already suffering from this disease.”
Christie says all involved were willing to share information — a rarity in the pharmaceutical industry — and use the NIH as a fair broker clearinghouse.
When asked, Christie was unwilling to give a timeline, but he said the meeting had helped to move the process ahead significantly.
“The solution to this problem is going to come much faster after today than it would have if we didn’t have today,” the governor said.
Christie likened the opioid crisis to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and said he hoped it would garner the same level of public discussion, urgency and resolve.
-
What Christie and Kellyanne Conway just said about the opioid crisis in N.J.
Sep 18, 2017 | NJ.com
By Brent Johnson
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie and Kellyanne Conway, a top aide to President Donald Trump, appeared together in New Jersey's capital city Monday to champion how the federal government is working with the pharmaceutical industry to combat the nation's deadly opioid addiction epidemic.
Trump tapped Christie, a longtime friend and adviser and fellow Republican, to be chairman of a federal commission to examine ways to fight the opioid crisis. And on Monday, Christie convened the panel in Trenton to hold a roundtable discussion with pharmaceutical industry executives about the epidemic -- which NJ Advance Media estimates has killed more than 2,000 people in New Jersey in 2016 alone.
New Jersey is home to a large swath of the pharma industry -- including many companies that were represented at Monday's event.
Christie said the national death toll from the opioid crisis is "equivalent to America enduring another 9/11 attack every two-and-a-half weeks" -- or "17 9/11s a year."
"Can you imagine this country putting up with 17 9/11s every year?" Christie asked the press during a news conference outside his office after the roundtable. "It's unacceptable. That's why it's a national emergency."
onway, a New Jersey native who is the White House's point person on fighting the crisis, said the commission is bipartisan "because opioid addiction is a nonpartisan issue starving for bipartisan solutions."
"And of all the politically charged issues that attend to the work in Trenton and attend to our work in Washington D.C., this is really one that should bring together people left, right, and center," Conway said at the news conference.
The commission and pharma executives discussed how the federal government -- especially the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- are forming a public-private partnership with the industry to address the epidemic.
"This problem will not be addressed sufficiently in our country if we don't have the active involvement and partnership with the pharmaceutical companies," Christie said.
Christie said the NIH will work with the industry in two key ways: to create "additional medication-assisted therapy options to treat opioid use disorders for people with addictions" and "to develop new alternatives for pain relief that are safe, non-addictive or non-opioid analgesics."
The governor said the NIH is already working with top pharma companies, the FDA, and public interest groups to beef up research.
Stephen Ubi, the president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said such work is crucial.
"It's a complex civil health challenge," Ubi said of the epidemic. "There's no silver bullet."
Also in attendance at the roundtable were former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., as well as executives from a number of pharma companies: Bristol-Myers Squibb; Celgene; Eisai; Johnson & Johnson; Otsuka; Purdue; Allergan; Merck; Pfizer; Pacira; Braeburn; Chromocell; Nektar; and Amicus Therapeutics.
-
Sep 18, 2017 | North Jersey.com
By Dustin Racioppi
Pharmaceutical companies and the federal government have agreed to develop and "fast track" non-opioid pain medication for patients and alternative treatments for people battling addiction, Gov. Chris Christie said Monday.
The collaboration is in response to the national opioid abuse crisis, which Christie compares to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s. At that time, pharmaceutical companies worked together to develop treatments to the deadly virus.
Christie said that the current abuse of heroin and other opiates "will not be addressed sufficiently" without the industry's cooperation once again.
"Without their help and participation, it will be near impossible to accomplish what we need to accomplish for the American people in terms of dealing with the opioid crisis and the overdose crisis in our country," Christie said.
Christie said that 17 pharmaceutical companies have agreed to share about 40 different compounds among each other in an effort to develop pain relief treatments that are safe and non-addictive. They will also work to create medication-assisted therapies for people already struggling with addiction.
The work will be done in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, Christie said. He did not put a timeline on the work.
The announcement followed a Monday morning meeting of the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which Christie chairs.
He was joined at the news conference by Kellyanne Conway, President Donald Trump's counselor; Dr. Francis S. Collins, M.D., director of the NIH; and Stephen J. Ubl, president and chief executive officer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
The news conference also served to kick off what is expected to be a busy week of announcements by Christie, including a proposal to spend $200 million on addiction and recovery efforts before he leaves office in January. That initiative was reported Sunday by NJ Advance Media.
Conway, who owns a home in Alpine, said Monday that the president has "felt the urgency" of the crisis and that it has become one of the rare issues in Washington, D.C., that "should bring people together" regardless of party affiliation.
"Opioid addiction is a scourge across the land. It literally has touched every state, every demographic. So we feel that since it's touched everyone in that way that it's a challenge that should be shared and born by all," said Conway.
Although Trump has said that the drug abuse is a national crisis, he has not yet signed an executive order declaring it one like the Christie panel had recommended. Many of the other recommendations of the July report have yet to be put into place. Christie did not seem concerned by the delay.
"It takes a little while to get those things implemented. You don't just flip a switch," Christie said. "The president and I speak regularly, and every time we speak we talk about this issue. And he is completely resolved to this being done. And my experience over the last 15 years, if Donald Trump is resolved to getting something done, it gets done."
It is an ironic twist that the pharmaceutical industry is now stepping up its role in addressing a crisis that has largely been blamed for helping to create.
States and cities across the country have filed lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies alleging deceptive marketing practices of painkillers and understating the risk of addiction, including New Brunswick-based Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, which has an office in Cranbury.
And New Jersey is involved in a multi-state investigation of the role of pharmaceutical companies in the opioid crisis.
When asked about the pharmaceutical companies' role in the crisis, Christie said that "our legal process will take care of that question and ultimately how it’s resolved."
Ubl, of the PhRMA lobbying group, said that the industry "stands ready to work in any way we can" with the administration.
-
Pharma ready to share if it helps beat the opioid crisis
Sep 18, 2017 | Healthcare Executive
By Julie Miller
On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that pharmaceutical manufacturers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are going to work collaboratively on getting new pharmaceutical products to market—products to treat opioid addiction as well as non-addictive medications to treat pain. Public-private partnerships such as this were part of the White House opioid commission’s recent recommendations.
There was unanimous agreement from the federal agencies and the 17 pharmaceutical companies present at the meeting in New Jersey to work collaboratively and share information. Christie leads the opioid commission, and Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, was also present to represent the White House.
Christie indicated that FDA will follow its review process in approving any new drug products, but also said the urgency of the opioid crisis might call for solutions to speed up the timeline. FDA demonstrated “the spirit to be willing to entertain those changes,” he said at the conference.
In a practical sense, NIH will serve as the fair-broker clearinghouse of information among the drug developers—essentially bringing them out of their competitive silos to build on scientific solutions. Products could include new choices for medication assisted treatment for those with opioid use disorders as well as non-addictive drugs for pain. There are about 40 compounds in the pipeline, according to Christie.
“Solutions will come much faster after today,” he said.
Francis Collins, director of NIH, said better overdose medications are also needed to reverse the effects of fentanyl and carfentanil.
Such public-private partnerships aimed at an urgent health need are not unprecedented, but Collins said it will take some time to formulate the solutions that can be implemented in everyday medicine.
“Make no mistake. This is hard,” Collins said. “If we had found an easy way to treat opioid addiction, that would have happened already. If we had found an easy way to develop alternatives to opioids that were just as potent but weren’t addictive, that would have happened already.”
-
Sep 18, 2017 | WACU (NBC)
By Philadelphia, PA
Rough Transcript: and today in trenton, new jersey governor chris christie will host a round table discussion on the opioid epidemic with pharmaceutical industry executives. christie says he also plans to spend $200 million to improve the state's approach to treatment and prevention. the money pulled from several state department budgets will fund a treatment program for the uninsured and add a program for babies born addicted.
-
Christie, Opioid Commission: Non-Addictive Pain Meds in the Works
Sep 18, 2017 | SNJ Today
By Staff
Governor Chris Christie announced on Monday, September 18th, that new steps are being taken to help bring an end to the opioid addiction and overdose crisis in the country.
In a press conference on Monday, Christie, alongside White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, announced that pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work on non-addictive pain medications and additional treatments to deal with the opioid epidemic.
The announcement came shortly after Christie convened a meeting of the White House Opioid Commission that he chairs.
Christie stated that public and private sectors must join together to address the issues, which he calls a "public health crisis."
Traditional Media Coverage
Broadcast Media Coverage
Add recipients
Suggested