The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a Federal Register notice instructing companies to stop manufacturing and distributing certain unapproved drugs that contain oxycodone. The notice is part of the US FDA’s Unapproved Drugs Initiative to remove unapproved new drugs from the market.  

The US FDA action affects companies that manufacture and distribute unapproved single-ingredient, immediate-release oxycodone drug products in oral dosage forms, including tablets, capsules and oral solutions. These products have not been evaluated by the US FDA for safety, effectiveness, manufacturing quality, or appropriate labelling, including dosing information and warnings, and cannot be legally marketed in the United States.

Oxycodone is an opioid analgesic, a class of powerful pain medications. Oxycodone is listed under Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act with an abuse liability similar to other opioid agonists. Improper labelling and use of oxycodone can lead to overdose and death. US FDA recognizes that opioid medications are associated with prescription drug misuse, abuse, and addiction, which have resulted in an increase in injuries and deaths across the United States over the last 10 years.

“It’s a high public health priority for US FDA to remove these unapproved products from the market to minimize consumer exposure to drugs that may be unsafe, ineffective, and of poor quality,” said Ilisa Bernstein, acting director of the Office of Compliance in the US FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Since US FDA-approved versions of these oral dosage forms are available by prescription, there should be no negative impact on consumers as a result of this action and no disruptions to the drug supply.”

The US FDA’s Unapproved Drugs Initiative, which began in June 2006, is the agency’s risk-based enforcement approach to efficiently and rationally bring all unapproved new drugs into the approval process. One of the goals of the initiative is to reduce consumer exposure to drugs that are not proven safe, effective, and of high quality.

Companies with certain products that are subject to this action are expected to stop manufacturing the products within 45 days and stop shipping the products within 90 days.

Products that are subject to these timeframes are products that: were introduced onto the market before September 19, 2011; were listed in the US FDA’s Drug Registration and Listing System before July 6, 2012, and  were being commercially used or sold before July 6, 2012.

Companies that continue to market products that fall within this scope of this Federal Register notice are subject to enforcement action including seizure, injunction, or other judicial or administrative proceeding.

Consumers and health care professionals are encouraged to report adverse side effects or medication errors from the use of prescription drug products to the US FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting programme.