Thread by @lmstroud89

🧵🧵🧵Oh thread time (and I've got an op-ed related to this...)
I think it's great that FDA recognizes the amazing lifesaving product that nalaxone provides hundreds of thousands of Americans - and many teens - each day...
However...

2/This is the same agency - albeit a different department - that refuses to acknowledge, let alone authorize, tobacco harm reduction products.

3/Also - the FDA is the same agency responsible for the opioid crisis - as they approved the massive marketing of the prescription opioids that created the first wave of the opioid epidemic (and caused massive amounts of deaths just due to pill overdoses)

4/In 2019, 672 Americans aged 15-24YO died from prescription drugs - a lot less than years prior - but still, the media was all EVALI!

5/There's this also weird wonkiness in public health... Take for example how public health refuses to let tobacco companies manufacture reduced risk products, but companies that have been sued for their role in the opiod epidemic, but can profit off of nalaxone?

6/The logic that tobacco companies are so horrible is nonsense at this point because other companies are doing the same thing but are not privy to Bloomberg's wrath...

7/But at the end of the day, all it indicates is a failure of US public health agencies such as the FDA and the CDC that really don't seem to be interested in the business of saving lives.