Senator Claire McCaskill held a well-attended town hall Friday at the Missouri University of Science and Technology’s Havener Center. McCaskill opened the event by highlighting her office’s recent efforts to address the ongoing opioid crisis which is impacting rural Missouri. Last month, she asked drug makers to turn over internal marketing documents and studies about their product’s potential for addiction.
“The United States of America has five percent of the world’s population, and we are consuming 80 percent of the opioids,” McCaskill said. “Now, I’m pretty sure Americans don’t have more physical pain than other human beings around the world. So why do we have 80 percent of the drug prescribed for pain? I want to get to the bottom of it. I’m worried, because of anecdotal evidence, that some of the companies that manufacture these products use sales and marketing techniques that were not honest and incentivized doctors to overprescribe.”
Later, during an interview with The Salem News, McCaskill reiterated her objectives.
“We’ve got to figure out why these drugs are being overprescribed to the extent that they are. I’m looking at the piece right now of the sales and marketing by the people who manufacture them. But then we also have to look at the prescribing and AMA guidelines. I know everyone appreciates going into the hospital room and telling them what your pain is between one and ten, but are nurses and doctors being compensated on what that level is, and are they overprescribing in order to keep that number low and potentially expose people to addiction?”
McCaskill also drew attention to the Missouri General Assembly not yet passing a prescription drug monitoring program for the state. Missouri is the only state in the nation without such a program. She further expressed concern that too much focus is being placed on building a wall along the border with Mexico to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country, when most illegal drugs are coming in through ports of entry.
Johnathan Grasmick, president of Missouri S&T’s College Republicans, offered a rebuttal to McCaskill’s focus on opioids after the town hall.
“I don’t think that’s a matter or subject we should be looking into at the moment simply because we need to decide how our nation wants to be run, specifically on a right or a left hand basis,” Grasmick said. “She’s very much not representing her people, her people don’t want to be focused on opioids right now. We’re more worried as a nation about greater things like Trump and his appointments.”
Grasmick cited McCaskill’s vote opposing Trump’s appointment of Justice Neal Gorisch to the Supreme Court as evidence.
As reported in the Dec. 15, 2015, edition of The Salem News, more than 200,000 people in the United States have died directly or indirectly from prescribed opioids abuse in the last 15 years. There have also been at least eight overdose deaths in Dent County within the last two years, according to the Dent County Coroner’s Office.
The other primary issue brought up by the Missouri S&T crowd several times were proposed federal cuts to science programs, and what one questioner called a “anti-science attitude of the Trump administration.”
McCaskill answered by saying she felt the proposals would amount to “cutting off our nose to spite our face” as a nation.
Other comments McCaskill made in response to questioners were that she supports a public option for the Affordable Care Act (but not single payer), she is against the recent roll back of internet privacy protections by Congress, and that she is not in support of public money being used to fund charter schools through a school vouchers system.
McCaskill is in the fourth year of her second term in the US Senate. If she runs for a third term, she will face re-election in 2018.
