Trump's FDA chief takes wide aim at opioid addiction crisis

Washington

THE Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to look into making some unusual allies in order to limit the consumption of opioid painkillers - health insurers and companies that manage prescription-drug benefits.

FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who is mounting a sweeping overhaul of the regulation of these addictive pills, plans to meet the benefit payers and insurance administrators in September; these are groups that the FDA has not typically worked with in its role as a drug regulator.

Mr Gottlieb's plan is to stem the tide of addiction to the pills by limiting the number of people exposed to them in the first place.

In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg in New York, he said: "Most people who become addicted to opioids are medically addicted. The way to reduce the rate of new addiction is to reduce the rate of exposure - and the way to reduce the rate of exposure is to make sure people ar…