ICYMI: Mike Rogers Under Fire As Big Pharma’s “Point Man” During the Opioid Crisis

New Reporting Highlights Mike Rogers’ Relentless Efforts in Congress to Push Prescription Opioids Onto the Market

MICHIGAN – A new report from Dropsite exposes Mike Rogers’ decade-long Congressional advocacy for the opioid industry. At each possible turn, Rogers functioned as Big Pharma’s point person in Congress while the industry engaged in a deadly effort to pump out opioids to the American public. 

Though Rogers has attempted to hide from his record in recent years, Dropsite reports that Rogers is inextricably linked to the onset of the opioid crisis:

• “It is a matter of record that Rogers spent most of his 12 years in Congress tied at the policy hip with opioid-producer front-groups dedicated to expanding ‘pain awareness’ and ‘reducing barriers to pain care.’”
• These ties are no one-off vote but instead “a strategic and persistent focus of his career, maintained throughout the prescription-opioid epidemic’s years of galloping growth.”
• The Rogers campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the story.

From his first days in Congress, Rogers established himself as a champion of the opioid industry.

• In 2003, Rogers’ introduced the National Pain Care Policy Act as his “first signature piece of legislation” in Congress. 
• The proposed bill “sought to use the full might of the U.S. health bureaucracy to strengthen the intellectual and policy foundations of opioid normalization, access, and use.”

“Rogers’ bill did not specify a slogan for this campaign, but ‘Got Oxy?’ would have been a catchy option.”

• Though his bill faltered in Congress, Rogers remained steadfast in his unwavering advocacy for the opioid industry. He headlined the Pain Care Forum, “an industry front group hatched to rally support for the Pain Care Policy Act.”
• Despite health professionals already sounding the alarm about opioid addiction, Rogers’ group deliberately misled the American public and argued that monitored use of opioids was “safe and effective and unlikely to cause addiction.”
• Rogers’ relentless advocacy resulted in much of his bill later being signed into law.
• “Rogers spent years in Congress pushing a bill that was clearly about training professionals to pump out more opioids, and worked behind the scenes with the companies that contributed to the crisis to get it passed,” says Jonathon Stoltman of the Opioid Policy Institute. “At the end of the day, he was either stupid, an industry stooge, or both.”