Posts in Pharmaceuticals
Medicalizing the Opioid Crisis: Limitations in Existing Interventions

Supply-side interventions developed to address the opioid epidemic ignore the social structures that created and perpetuated it, while also creating shifts in the opioid market correlated with movement away from natural opiates and towards increased usage of more potent heroin and synthetic opioids. As a result, this shift has led to rises in overall OUD-associated mortality rate.

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A Simple Solution to the Problem of “Product Hopping”

In this piece, Professor Carrier explains why legislation addressing product hopping is the best option to address this anticompetitive behavior. He focuses on the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act of 2021, bipartisan legislation that addresses the harms from product hopping while appropriately deferring to any reasonable justifications the drug company could offer. He explains how the legislation is conservative in several ways and addresses the industry’s argument that product-hopping legislation harms innovation. And he concludes that legislation can play a crucial role in ensuring that consumers have access to affordable generic medicines.

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