Families and friends who have lost loved ones to opioid overdoses leave pill bottles outside the Purdue Pharma headquarters in protest on 17 August 2018. Credit: Jessica Hill/AP

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI — The Food and Drug Administration is sacrificing American lives by continuing to approve new high-strength opioid painkillers, and manipulating the process in favor of big pharma, according to the chair of the agency’s own opioid advisory committee.

Dr Raeford Brown told the Guardian there is “a war” within the FDA as officials in charge of opioid policy have “failed to learn the lessons” of the epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past 20 years and continues to claim about 150 lives a day.

Brown accused the agency of putting the interests of narcotics manufacturers ahead of public health, most recently by approving a “terrible drug”, Dsuvia, in a process he alleged was manipulated.

“They should stop considering any new opioid evaluation,” said Brown. “For every day and every week and every month that the FDA don’t do the […]