Opinion: Industry-funded attacks on the CDC’s opioid prescribing guideline are eroding public health

A public health document that counsels physicians to not overprescribe opioids would seem to be an unlikely candidate for attack. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain,” published in 2016, has attracted constant criticism since its inception. The attacks come from two directions: groups and physicians who receive money from opioid manufacturers and patients with chronic pain.

Until the CDC began drafting the guideline, opioid manufacturers had a firm grip on what the government said about opioids. The Food and Drug Administration parroted industry messaging on chronic pain and rejected mandatory opioid-related training for physicians. Industry lobbyists orchestrated the creation of a 19-member panel at the National Institutes of Health to coordinate pain research. Many of the panelists were heavily beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.

In contrast, the CDC applied strict conflict-of-interest restrictions to the authors of its opioid prescribing guideline. When the impeccably evidence-based draft was released, the pharmaceutical-industry-funded Washington Legal Foundation accused the CDC of failing to follow administrative processes. The Academy of Integrative Pain Management demanded that Congress investigate how the CDC had developed the guideline. A probe by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, however, .