A key advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend a booster shot of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine for many of the vaccine’s recipients, at least six months after a second dose. The panel endorsed a half-dose as a third injection for people 65 and older as well as younger adults at high risk because of their medical conditions or jobs, the same groups of people who became eligible for a Pfizer-BioNTech booster last month. While regulators are not obligated to follow the panel’s recommendations, they typically do. Although committee members decried the lack of more robust data justifying a booster, several emphasized that F.D.A. had already set a precedent by authorizing additional shots on [...]

Some of the nation's top pharmacy brands are preparing to defend themselves in court against claims that they drove the opioid epidemic by turning a blind eye to the flow of opioids into the black market. The legal drama will play out in Ohio, where the first federal trial of this nature ended in 2019 with McKesson, Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health, and Teva Pharmaceuticals agreeing to a $260 million settlement with Cuyahoga and Summit counties. Now, Lake and Trumbull counties will square off against CVS, Walgreens, Giant Eagle, and Walmart. Mass quantities of opioid analgesics were shipped to the area—far more than medically necessary, according to the jurisdictions—and the pharmacies continued to dispense the drugs despite the presence of what [...]

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Wednesday signed the 2021-2022 state budget. Included in the budget is Boilerplate Section 1625, which ensures that independent pharmacies with common ownership of seven or fewer stores would continue to receive the enhanced dispensing fee they have been receiving since earlier this year. The Legislature attempted to make changes to the Boilerplate to reduce the dispensing fee for certain medications, but the Michigan Pharmacists Association (MPA) was able to convince legislators of the value of this benefit and ensured that the full amount will continue to be given to independent pharmacies in the coming fiscal year.

Pharmacy Day at the Capitol (PDAC), hosted by the Michigan Pharmacists Association (MPA) on Tuesday, Sept. 28, was a success, with more than 135 pharmacy professionals participating in 36 legislive meetings, the largest grop of pharmacists in three years. WILX News featured PDAC on their 6 p.m. news broadcast Tuesday,which can be viewed at the 5:17 mark. MPA partnered with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) for a medication takeback event held in conjunction with PDAC. More than 260 pounds of unused, unwanted or expired medications were collected and safely disposed of, with more than 50 pounds of controlled substances.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a Public Safety Alert warning Americans of the alarming increase in the lethality and availability of fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine. DEA’s Public Safety Alert, the first in six years, seeks to raise public awareness of a significant nationwide surge in counterfeit pills that are mass-produced by criminal drug networks in labs, deceptively marketed as legitimate prescription pills, and are killing unsuspecting Americans at an unprecedented rate. These counterfeit pills have been seized by DEA in every U.S. state in unprecedented quantities. More than 9.5 million counterfeit pills were seized so far this year, which is more than the last two years combined. DEA laboratory testing reveals a dramatic rise in the [...]