DOT Proposes Adding Four Heavily Abused Opioids to Its Drug Testing Program
The notice of proposed rulemaking, announced Jan. 19, is intended to harmonize with the revised mandatory guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for federal drug-testing programs for urine testing.
“This proposal also adds clarification to certain drug-testing program provisions where necessary, removes outdated information in the regulations that is no longer needed and proposes to remove the requirement for employers and Consortium/Third Party Administrators to submit blind specimens,” DOT said in a pre-publication posting.
DOT said HHS monitors drug abuse trends and reviews information on new drugs of abuse from sources such as federal regulators, researchers, the drug-testing industry and public and private sector employers.
The proposal noted that HHS said its recommendation for adding the four semisynthetic drugs was based on a review of scientific information and on input from the Drug Testing Advisory Board on the methods necessary to detect the analytes of drugs and on drug abuse trends.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2012 indicates that 259 million prescriptions were written for prescription opioids, which is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills, DOT said.
According to the SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2014 data, almost 2 million Americans misused or were dependent on prescription opioids, and according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids rose from 28,647 in 2014 to 33,091 in 2015.
In addition, the National Center for Health Statistics data indicates that every year since 2002 more than 40% of the total number of overdose deaths in the United States have been related to prescription opioids.
