Joe Barton: “We have a great piece of legislation before us today. Chairman Walden and Ranking Member Pallone have been great leaders…”

“We have a great piece of legislation before us today. Chairman Walden and Ranking Member Pallone have been great leaders in shepherding dozens of opioid-related bills through the Energy and Commerce Committee. This particular bill, H.R. 6, is the crown jewel of all that legislation. We all know what a scourge the opioid epidemic is. Since 2015, more Americans have died annually from opioid overdoses than from the AIDS epidemic at its peak. The amendment that is before us today is very simple. It requires the FDA, after consultation with all the stakeholders in open meetings and workshops, to develop some opioid prescription guidelines based on hard evidence. This amendment gives the FDA 2 years to develop these guidelines. It requires the FDA to post the guidelines on their web page and to send the guidelines to the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House and to the Education and Workforce committee over in the Senate. It is a bipartisan amendment. Congresswoman Annie Kuster of New Hampshire and Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina have both worked with myself and other members of the committee to develop this amendment. Opioids are a little bit different than some of the other drugs that are abused and lead to addiction in that most people are exposed to opioids the first time because of a prescription. They have some sort of acute pain that opioids can help manage and in prescribing these opioids the doctors are trying to help alleviate the pain.…”