Senate health committee advances changes to how FDA would approve new opioids

The Sen­ate Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, La­bor and Pen­sions com­mit­tee on Tues­day af­ter­noon ad­vanced three ma­jor bills re­lat­ed to the opi­oid epi­dem­ic and can­cer screen­ing, in­clud­ing an amend­ment that would trans­form how the FDA reg­u­lates opi­oids.

In­sert­ed in­to the reau­tho­riza­tion of the Sup­port Act, which aims to take the opi­oid cri­sis head-on with more funds and re­sources, Sen. Mike Braun’s (R-IN) amend­ment would al­low the FDA to con­sid­er whether each new opi­oid ap­proved “pro­vides a sub­stan­tial im­prove­ment, in terms of greater safe­ty or greater ef­fec­tive­ness, or ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to pa­tient care” when com­pared to cur­rent­ly ap­proved opi­oids.

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