How Close Should Anti-Addiction Experts Be To An Industry That Many Blame For Opioid Crisis?

The New York Times: Drug Industry Wages Opioid Fight Using An Anti-Addiction Ally
As Minnesota lawmakers prepared to push a proposed tax on opioid sales in November, the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists who opposed the bill set up a meeting with its sponsors, and they brought an unusual guest: Jessica Hulsey Nickel, a prominent anti-addiction advocate in Washington. Ms. Nickel told the lawmakers that she took no position on the tax and was simply offering her group’s resources to help fight the state’s drug epidemic. But her presence along with five representatives from the industry’s trade group raised eyebrows among the Minnesota lawmakers, who believed that drug companies needed to be held accountable for the prescription opioid crisis — not embraced as an ally. (Corkery and Thomas, 2/8)

Miami Herald: Sessions Talks Tough About Tackling Nation's Opioid Epidemic At Summit In Miami
As an opioid epidemic scars the nation, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled from Tampa to Key West to Miami this week to declare a new war on drugs — one intended to stop the deadly toll of addictive painkillers, heroin and fentanyl in Florida and other ravaged states. Sessions acknowledged at a South Florida opioid summit on Thursday that the battle will be far different from the one carried out against the Colombian cartels and cocaine cowboys of the violent Miami Vice era. (Weaver, 2/8)

Stat: Investors Want Shareholders To Urge AmerisourceBergen To Mitigate Opioid Crisis
Agroup of institutional investors has launched a campaign to convince shareholders in AmerisourceBergen (ABC), one of the nation’s largest wholesalers, to support a proposal that would require the company to provide more information on steps taken to manage financial and reputational risks associated with the opioid crisis. The move was expected after the Securities and Exchange Commission last month rejected efforts by the company to omit the proposals from its upcoming annual shareholder meeting on March 1. Another proposal would require the wholesaler to disclose if its board clawed back compensation from senior executives due to misconduct. (Silverman, 2/8)

And in more news —

Los Angeles Times: Trifecta Of Opioids, Alcohol And Suicide Are Blamed For The Drop In U.S. Life Expectancy
An epidemic of despair is disproportionately claiming the lives of rural white Americans in the prime of adulthood. And for a second year in a row, their deaths by drugs, drink and self-destruction have caused life expectancy in the United States to fall. That milestone, suggests an editorial in a respected medical journal, marks a sustained reversal of close to a century of improving health for Americans. And it raises a puzzling mystery: What is causing the despair, and what will restore hope and health to these battered Americans? (Healy, 2/8)

The Associated Press: ‘Kryptonite’ Guitarist’s Family Says Doctor Fed Opioid Habit
The family of a longtime guitarist for 3 Doors Down is accusing an Alabama doctor of fueling the rocker’s opioid addiction before he died of a drug overdose. Matthew Roberts, 38, was found dead in August 2016 in the hallway of a hotel outside Milwaukee, where he was to perform in a charity concert. (Martin, 2/8)

The Star Tribune: Hennepin County Embarks On Its Most Ambitious Opioid Prevention Strategy
Hennepin County should equip all law enforcement officers with naloxone, hire a response czar and provide more options for users to get clean as part of a strategy unveiled Thursday to combat the deadly opioid epidemic. County commissioners were presented with a comprehensive response to a crisis that took a record 162 lives in the county last year. The problem isn’t unique to Minnesota, as more than 60,000 people in the United States died from opioid overdoses in 2016, more than were killed by gunfire, traffic accidents and HIV combined. (Chanen, 2/8)