VCU professor points to short comings in U.S. drug treatment policy in congressional testimony

By Charles O'Keeffe
VCU Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In testimony today (March 30) before the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Virginia Commonwealth University professor and former pharmaceutical executive Charles O’Keeffe criticized federal policies that discourage development and limit access to new treatments for drug abuse and addiction.

O’Keeffe, professor of preventive medicine and community health and a member of VCU’s Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, said longstanding, strong federal regulation governing how physicians treat drug addiction and which narcotic medicines they can use in that treatment has led to a system that separates the treatment of drug dependence from the normal practice of medicine and isolates it to a limited number of narcotic treatment programs.

The result, he said, is that more than 5 million Americans affected by drug addiction remain untreated, even though the research community – led by the National Institute on Drug Abuse – is making inroads to discovering new treatment methods and pharmaceutical products and new uses for older products.

O’Keeffe praised the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 as a major step forward in the treatment of addiction. The Act permits physicians who meet certain qualifications to treat drug addiction in their offices rather than in traditional methadone clinics with Schedule III, IV, and V narcotic medications that have been specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But, he says, the requirements of the act limit the number of patients who may be treated and also the number of physicians who are willing to begin treating patients. In addition, new drug treatment providers are discouraged from entering the field.

The oversight hearing of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources was called to examine how the effectiveness of drug treatment programs is measured. The subcommittee was seeking information on how measuring results can improve drug treatment and gathering opinions on the best strategies for improving treatment.

O’Keeffe recently joined VCU after retiring as president and CEO of Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals, Inc. O’Keeffe has had a distinguished career in the pharmaceutical industry and government. As president of Drug Abuse Rehabilitation Services, he developed the first child-resistant, abuse-resistant vehicle for dispensing methadone. He served as president of Washington Reference Laboratories, which provided toxicology services to the Department of Defense during the Vietnam War. He has served in the White House for three presidents -- as advisor, special assistant for international health and deputy director for international affairs in the Office of Drug Abuse Policy – and has served on U.S. delegations to the World Health Assembly and the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs. O´Keeffe was instrumental in helping Congress reach consensus on the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000.