How Can U.S. Fight the Opioid Crisis? Try Antidote Patents (Bloomberg)

Thursday May 3rd, 2018

The Trump administration should fight the opioid epidemic with a novel weapon, say the city of Baltimore and a consumer advocacy group: overriding patents on the widely-used overdose antidote naloxone.

“The problem in Baltimore is not the policy. It’s the price,” Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen said at Thursday’s event. She said all 620,000 Baltimore residents should have naloxone in their medicine cabinets, “and we should be able to provide it to them.” But even with the city’s discounted price of $75 per Narcan kit, that would cost $47 million a year, while the city has budgeted only $1 million annually to spend on the antidote.

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To much fanfare last year, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to declare a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” Trump said at the time. “It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.”

When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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