FDA Orders Tougher Warnings on Pain Killer Drugs to Prevent Addiction and Overdose Deaths

The U.S. Federal Drug Administration ordered drug makers to put tougher warnings on the most commonly taken painkillers amid the disturbingly rising addiction and overdose leading to deaths.

This addictive-causing drugs known as opoids are very potent narcotics within the same category as heroin and morphine. According to the FDA, opoids like OxyContin are only used as a last resort to treat severe pain.

Prior to the new FDA policy, these drugs were categorized as proper treatment for moderate to severe range levels of pain. Drug labels now will only indicate that it is only appropriate for managing severe pain that require long-term, regular and scheduled intake.

Apart from changing the recommended use, drugs will now have warnings about its effects on pregnant women. The hospitals have declared a rise in number of drug dependent babies based on a study of American Medical Association.

These warnings are applicable to more powerful OxyContins, which are time-released. Often used for extended periods to manage chronic pain, addicted people found it easy to crush, snort or inject them into their systems in order to have the full effect at once, getting a heroin-high as a result.

However, those immediate-release types of drugs have also been used prevalently causing similar deaths due to addiction and overdose, and alarmingly, even for properly prescribed and taken drugs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, death statistics for these drugs have overtaken those from cocaine, heroin and other similar pills combined. The center has recorded 16,500 painkiller-related deaths in 2010.

These drug-label changes are only the initial efforts of the FDA to curb the surge of mortality rates caused by painkiller overdose but at the same time allowing distribution of the said drugs to those patients who legitimately need them. The FDA will soon require pharmaceutical companies to do in-depth study on how to ensure safety of patients taking the drugs long term.

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