Ed Markey: “today we are about to begin consideration of the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug…”

“today we are about to begin consideration of the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug Administration. This is a historic time at that agency. It has a record which is not enviable in terms of the way in which it has been dealing with the opioid prescription drug epidemic in our country. I want to give just a very brief history of what has been happening on that issue. About 20 years ago, the FDA was asked to approve OxyContin--which is just a shortened form of oxycodone--continuously going into the bloodstreams of Americans. Purdue Pharma represented that this would be a safer way of having prescription opioids go into the American medical system. Nothing could have been further from the truth because oxycodone--the material inside of OxyContin--is molecularly very similar to heroin. So when one has a bottle of OxyContin or oxycodone continuously in your cabinet--30 pills, 60 pills or more--you are talking about having a bottle in your medicine cabinet that is very close to being heroin. Now if someone said to you that your child or family member is now taking something that is very close to heroin, that would have a profound impact on you--but that is never quite explained to the American public. That is something that was not understood at the time because Purdue Pharmaceutical company was representing that it was safe to take OxyContin. It turned out that was not the case. Today we have an epidemic in the United States.…”