FDA’s Dr. Makary on Push to Restrict 7-OH Opioid: I’m Shocked that Somebody Can Walk to the Vape Store and Buy an Opioid

EXCERPT:

MAKARY: "Well, look, Maria, we want to raise awareness. They’re in vape stores, they’re in gas stations, some convenience stores and bodega. It's a substance very few people know about. It's called 7-OH, and it acts as an opioid. It's not just an opioid-like substance,  it is technically an opioid because it binds to that opioid receptor, even more potently than morphine in recent studies. So we've got to raise awareness. We got caught flat-footed with the opioid epidemic. 18 years after oxycontin was approved, we realized we missed a massive swell of a crisis of addiction. We don’t want that to happen again. We want to be proactive. I’m personally, Maria, shocked that somebody can just walk down the street to these vape stores and buy an opioid. So we’re going to recommend scheduling, the DEA has taken our initiation and they’re going to do the process to treat this as a controlled substance. My concern is right now, it’s not a controlled substance and nobody even knows what it is."