Gov. Peter Shumlin sent a letter to the leaders of two pharmaceutical companies condemning them for running an advertisement during the Super Bowl for a drug to reduce opioid-induced constipation.
Shumlin’s office issued a news release Thursday morning criticizing AstraZeneca and Daiichi-Sankyo for a drug called Movantik (generic name naloxegol), which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in 2014.
The companies released the ad in partnership with five chronic pain groups: the U.S. Pain Foundation, the American Chronic Pain Association, For Grace, Power of Pain, and CreakyJoints.
The one-minute ad is called “OIC is Different” and features a man walking around a city while envying people who can easily go to the bathroom.
“In the midst of America’s opiate and heroin addiction crisis the advertisement was not only poorly timed, it was a shameful attempt to exploit that crisis to boost your companies’ profits,” Shumlin wrote in the letter.
He repeated a stance he described in his State of the State address — that the United States is “too reliant on FDA-approved opiates,” that pain medicine is overprescribed, and that overprescription is leading to the nation’s heroin epidemic.
“I ask that you immediately pull this advertisement — and others promoting this drug — from the air and instead use the money to fund opiate and heroin prevention efforts,” Shumlin wrote.
About two hours after Shumlin’s staff released the letter, CreakyJoints, a nonprofit organization that was cited at the end of the advertisement, released a statement saying Shumlin “conflates” pain management with addiction.
“One of CreakyJoints’ missions is to start conversations about conditions related to chronic pain, particularly as it relates to all forms of arthritis,” wrote Jessica Daitch, a spokesperson. “Many of our members use opioids as part of the pain management treatment strategy that they developed with their doctor.”
“Opioid addiction and misuse is a very real problem in the United States,” she wrote. “However, chronic disease patients cannot be classified as junkies or abusers. Rather, they are patients in need of solutions to help them manage their quality of life.”
