Activists in Washington, D.C., placed an 800-pound heroin spoon branded with the FDA's logo outside of the main office of HHS April 5 to protest the drug agency's handling of the opioid epidemic, according to STAT.
The protesters urged the FDA to stop approving opioids and to start encouraging drugmakers to find treatments for addiction. During the protest, the group cited the FDA's approval of Dsuvia, an opioid 10 times stronger than fentanyl, and urged the Trump administration to nominate an FDA commissioner who will take the opioid crisis more seriously.
"When you are willing to overrule the objections of your expert advisory committees on opioids and rapidly push them out when you’ve got this climbing death rate, and yet you consistently slow-walk the medications to treat addiction, we have trouble," Carol McDaid, one of the protesters who is a lobbyist for a practice that focuses on addiction and recovery, told STAT.
The protest was outside the Hubert H. Humphrey building in Washington, D.C., instead of the FDA's building, because the space in front of the FDA campus in Silver Spring, Md., is not accessible to unauthorized visitors.
The artful protest is the latest in a series created by Domenic Esposito, a Boston-based artist and activist. Last year, Mr. Esposito installed a massive spoon sculpture outside OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's headquarters in Stamford, Conn., and Rhodes Pharmaceuticals' office building in Coventry, R.I.
Read the full report here.
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