Drugmakers have decided to stop selling a kind of controversial fentanyl painkiller at the end of this month, the Food and Drug Administration said this week, marking an end to a controversial brand of "fentanyl lollipops" and other formulations blamed for playing a part in fueling the opioid overdose epidemic . The end of sales of the drugs, which doctors call transmucosal immediate release fentanyl or TIRF medications, follows decades of investigations and lawsuits against the drugmakers that had aggressively marketed the fast-acting and powerful painkillers. "As of the date of this announcement, there are fewer than 150 patients receiving treatment with TIRF medicines," the FDA said in a statement published this week.
Patients who are currently on a one of these medicine may continue treatment while the supply is available, according to the statement. Drugmaker Cephalon had the FDA's approval to market these drugs, old under brand names like Actiq, as a sweetened lozenge on a stick, or Fentora, a tablet that was designed to dissolve in the mouth, for treating cancer patients who had developed a tolerance to less powerful opioids. But investigators found the company's salespeople were flouting FDA rules curbing marketing of the painkillers, getting doctors to more widely prescribe the addictive drugs "off-label" outside the narrow scope of the agency's approval.
Generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals moved to acquire Cephalon in 2011, at a time when the ma.