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Last updated on Thursday, March 27, 2014
(UNDATED) - A new, powerful painkiller wouldn’t be available if the Attorney General had his way.
Zohydro was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October 2013, even though the FDA's advisory committee recommended that the drug not be released.
Zohydro is the first single-ingredient hydrocodone ever approved in the U.S. and contains five times the amount of hydrocodone as Vicodin.
The drug was shipped to doctors and pharmacists for the first time this month, and some believe that will lead to more cases of drug abuse.
"That the FDA would approve a more powerful (drug) and put it out on the market, I am unable to understand their logic on this," said Attorney General Greg Zoeller. He was one of six attorneys general who signed a letter sent to the Department of Health and Human Services urging it to overturn the drug's approval.
Zoeller says Zohydro contains nothing that would deter its abuse.
"You can crush it. You can snort it. You can turn it into a liquid and inject it. It is ready for the abuse that we are already seeing in an epidemic across the United States."
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