ALBANY — A coalition of addiction recovery organizations from across New York State has asked Gov. Kathy Hochul and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to scrap one pharmaceutical company’s alleged “purchasing monopoly” on the state’s availability of the anti-opioid overdose drug known as naloxone.
“We need you to intervene now, using your executive powers, to open this contract to competitive bid and thus ensure that tax dollars are more efficiently used to procure and distribute more doses of this life-saving medication,” the groups asked the governor in a letter dated Tuesday.
The coalition of nearly a dozen groups included Save the Michaels of the World, a Buffalo-based anti-addiction organization.
“Today, unconscionably, a significant percentage of the public resources dedicated to this program are driving corporate revenues, when with one swift action by you, these wasted resources can be redirected to procure and distribute more naloxone − and save more lives,” the coalition said. “Please act today before we are, yet again, locked into an indefensible sole-source contract that needlessly costs us lives and dollars.”
Emergent Devices, a subsidiary of the Maryland-based pharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions, has a $21 million contract with the state Department of Health’s contract for naloxone, sold as Narcan, which expires July 24. It has a $4 million contract with the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports that was extended Jan. 1. That runs until Dec. 31, 2025.
The coalition questioned the state’s reliance on a single vendor − Emergent has held the contract to provide naloxone since at least August 2017 − without a more open vetting process. The letter noted that since 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved at least four generic equivalents of Narcan. The letter said Emergent’s contract greatly limits the availability of naloxone to battle an…
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