John M. Gray

Opinion contributor

As part of the national debate about the opioid epidemic and its causes, pharmaceutical wholesale distributors have been the subject of a variety of unfounded claims, most notably the myth that distributors could have unilaterally stemmed the crisis.

The recent release of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) data underscores a critical point: Federal regulators had the complete picture of opioid prescribing and dispensing and chose to allow it to continue.

Distributors reported the information included in the ARCOS database — but historically, each distributor only knew what it alone was delivering to a particular pharmacy, not what that same pharmacy received from other sources. Only the DEA had the full data set and the ability to act on it.

Not only did the DEA fail to act on the ARCOS data, the agency took steps to increase the supply of opioids. Between 1993 and 2015, the agency increased the production allocation of oxycodone by 39-fold, giving the green light to manufacturers to increase production of opioid medicines.

Simply put, to blame the distributors is misplaced and misunderstands their role. The pharmaceutical supply chain is designed to ensure that after a DEA-registered physician writes a prescription, the medicine is delivered safely, securely and reliably to the state and federally registered pharmacy that ordered it. There was never an expectation that distributors — logistics companies that do not manufacture or prescribe opioids — would second-guess a licensed physician’s clinical decision-making.

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Distributors are committed to working collaboratively to reverse this epidemic, and the industry has endorsed a range of policy measures that will go a long way toward ensuring that opioid prescriptions are better tracked and managed.

The prescription opioid abuse crisis is complex, but it can be addressed if we are honest about its causes and work together to move beyond misleading rhetoric and misplaced blame and toward practical problem solving.

John M. Gray is president and chief executive officer of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance.

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