D.C. Diagnosis: Bolstering addiction treatment polls well across parties, new survey shows

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Hello and happy Thursday! In a tense election season, my go-to feel-good show has been The Great British Baking Show. Feelings about Caramel Week and news tips are always welcome to rachel.cohrs@statnews.com.

Pharma executives’ donations lean Democrat

Most pharmaceutical executives haven’t donated to any political candidate in the final leadup to the election, but the ones that have have largely given to Democrats, a STAT analysis of campaign finance filings found.

Read the full story for the list of execs who donated to Vice President Harris’ campaign, and the one outlier who donated to Republicans.

The revolving door’s dizzying effect on the FDA’s tobacco fight

As FDA regulators mount lawsuits and write regulations to rein in the tobacco industry, they’re looking across the table at some familiar faces, Kathryn Kranhold writes in a STAT partnership with The Examination.

“It seems like every time we get sued in the tobacco industry, a former FDA lawyer is leading the lawsuit,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said

Kranhold traces the career paths of various FDA regulators who left the agency for jobs at outside law firms. She conducted interviews with former agency officials now working for industry, and obtained internal FDA emails that show what kind of work former officials are doing. Read more.

RFK’s rise is scrambling the GOP’s health plans

Former President Trump’s alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his adoption of RFK Jr.’s concerns about chronic illnesses in children is shaking up the traditional ideas of what a Republican administration could look like, Sarah Owermohle reports.

While some in Trump’s orbit welcome a broader conversation about public health reform and how to make the country healthier, some industry leaders are concerned that Kennedy’s skepticism of science could be dangerous.

Sarah spoke with eight former Trump officials and longtime Republican health leaders, as well as biotech and pharmaceutical executives, about their take on the rise of the Make America Healthy Again movement.

What do rent control and 340B have in common?

Drug discounts and rent control don’t typically have anything in common, but in the multiverse that is the California ballot measure system, there’s a connection.

Michael Weinstein, a controversial AIDS activist in California, has been pushing rent control ballot measures for years. Apartment builders don’t like it, so they’re going after one of the biggest revenue generators of Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation: the 340B drug discount program.

Read John Wilkerson’s story for more details about one of the weirdest ballot measure combinations this election.

Bolstering addiction treatment polls well across parties, new survey shows

Drug addiction was a campaign-trail mainstay in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. But this time around, candidates for the White House and Congress are largely steering clear of the issue, save for cursory mentions of fentanyl crossing the U.S. border. The issue is so absent that in President Biden’s final debate before dropping out of the race, neither he nor former President Trump used the word “treatment” in response to a direct question about the ongoing drug overdose crisis.

But a new poll from the Legal Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, shows that Americans are more supportive than ever of a robust drug-epidemic response and access to addiction treatment. According to the survey, 64% of Republicans, 72% of independents, and 86% of Democrats believe drug addiction should be treated more as a medical issue than a criminal problem. Nearly two-thirds reported that they personally knew somebody affected by the drug crisis, a significant increase from a nearly identical survey in 2019, when just 44% of those polled said they knew someone affected.

The overall share of Americans who believe drug addiction should be treated medically, not criminally, also increased in the last five years — as did support for syringe exchange programs, increased government spending on addiction treatment, and screening and reentry programs for incarcerated people.

What we’re reading

• Inside the bungled bird flu response, where profits collide with public health, Vanity Fair
• Sales from controversial drug discount program rose to $66 billion last year, STAT
• Is it time to refocus the role of the CDC?, JAMA Health Forum
• What the U.S. election could mean for Medicare, drug pricing, and AI, STAT