Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Caucus on International Narcotics Control, earlier this month led the Senate to overwhelming passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act on opioid addiction.  Prior to that, he led the bill through the Judiciary Committee.  The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America recognized that without his leadership, the bill never would have passed the Senate.  Grassley has urged the Obama Administration to re-instate the successful unused prescription drugs take-back program, which it discontinued in favor of other disposal methods, then later re-instated at the urging of Grassley and other senators.  Grassley and fellow senators also urged the Administration to increase the legal caps on the patient limit for buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorders in June 2014.  Today, the Administration is finally announcing a proposed rule on lifting the caps.  Grassley made the following comment on President Obama’s anti-opioid abuse measures announced today.
 
“I don’t disagree with a lot of the policy coming from the President and his Administration on anti-opioid abuse.  A lot of the same policy direction is reflected in the Senate bill.  I disagree with how long it takes the Administration to settle and act on solutions.  Better access to buprenorphine is something that could have happened a long time ago.  The Administration also cancelled a drug take-back program that it’s now celebrating as a remedy.  We need more leadership and faster action when people are struggling with life and death concerns.  In the time something takes to make its way through the federal bureaucracy, many more people could have been helped.
 
“I also disagree with some of the Obama Administration’s drug enforcement priorities.   In August 2013, the Administration decided to effectively suspend enforcement of federal law relating to marijuana in states that legalized it for recreational use.  The Administration claimed it would keep track of and enforce certain priority areas, like keeping marijuana from minors, but a Government Accountability Office report that I requested exposed this policy as a sham.  The mixed messages and misplaced priorities are troubling when so many experts find that people who are addicted to marijuana are much more likely to be addicted to heroin.” 

A drug caucus hearing on the marijuana policy is scheduled for next week.  

Correspondence between Grassley and four fellow senators and the Administration on  buprenorphine is available here and here.           

Correspondence on the Administration’s re-instatement of the drug take-back program is available here.  

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