By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

In the wake of a highly critical report on 60 Minutes, the head of the Food and Drug Administration has pledged that drug companies will be required to prove that opioid medications are effective long-term in treating chronic pain and do not cause addiction.

“We are going to impose a mandate on existing products… to answer the question that people have been posing for years: whether you have declining efficacy, and whether that declining efficacy can lead to addiction,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, told The Washington Post.

60 Minutes reported on Sunday that the FDA caved into lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry in 2001 by changing the warning labels on OxyContin and other opioid medications to indicate they were effective for “daily, around-the-clock, long-term (use).” Critics say there is no good evidence to support that claim.