DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY STRIPPED OF ROLE ON NEW PAINKILLERS

A House-Senate conference committee yesterday dropped a controversial
provision that gave the Drug Enforcement Administration authority to
review, and potentially block, the sale of all new prescription narcotics.

The legislation, promoted by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and attached
to a multi-department appropriations bill, passed last year with
little notice. But this year the Food and Drug Administration, many
drug makers and doctors who treat pain patients objected to renewing
it, and the provision was stripped from the bill.

Opponents said the provision was an unwarranted intrusion by a law
enforcement agency into the FDA's drug-review system. Pain
specialists also said the DEA reviews could jeopardize development of
new drugs needed by patients with chronic pain.

Wolf's spokesman, Dan Scandling, said that Congress had missed an
opportunity to better control the sale of powerful new narcotic painkillers.

"The goal behind it was to prevent another OxyContin," he said,
referring to the popular painkiller that has been subject to abuse.
"Now that oversight isn't going to be there."

John Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said
the provision was dropped at the request of the Senate, which did not
include it in its version of the appropriations bill.

The dispute over the measure, and the almost $50 million in
additional DEA funding attached to it, reflect a wider debate over
the DEA's proper role in monitoring the use of prescription painkillers.

The agency has arrested scores of doctors, pharmacists and other
health-care workers accused of negligence or willful diversion in
dispensing prescription narcotics that were later abused. Pain
doctors complained that, as a result, many physicians have stopped
prescribing needed painkillers.

The same conference committee also approved language proposed by Rep.
Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.) that would bar the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative from including provisions in future trade agreements
that would make it almost impossible to import prescription drugs
from foreign countries. The last three agreements -- with Singapore,
Australia and Morocco -- included language that barred importation of
drugs even if the practice were legalized in the future.