Mike Rogers vows to fight drug war, but urged opioid access in Congress

• While in Congress, Mike Rogers was an advocate for increased pain treatment
• Doctors say overprescription of opioids helped fuel the ongoing opioid crisis
• Now running for U.S. Senate, Rogers says his time in the FBI will help him fight the opioid epidemic

In September 2003, second-term Michigan U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers held a press conference in Washington to promote a bill he’d introduced. The National Pain Care Policy Act, he said, would address “the largest significant health problem facing America.”

It would be the beginning of a decade of advocacy by the Livingston County politician to boost opioid prescriptions, with a goal to “extend accessibility (of pain medications) to more and more Americans suffering from chronic pain.” 

Prescriptions soared during that decade, but so did addiction and deaths, as the nation tumbled into a crushing epidemic it is still battling today.

Rogers’ home state wasn’t spared, with 27,000 people dying from opioids since 2000, the equivalent of the city of Hamtramck becoming a cemetery. Since 2021, one Michigander has died every four hours from an opioid overdose.

In recent months, now campaigning as the Republican nominee for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, Rogers has talked about the opioid crisis, and the newer synthetic-opioid fentanyl surge, saying his background in the FBI makes him a good pick to fight the drug war.

This week, he criticized physicians for overprescribing the pills and a lack of enforcement by the federal government. 

Related:

• Drug deaths drop in Michigan as task force weighs how to spend opioid funds
• Senate vote: Paths to victory for Rogers, Slotkin offer hope, peril in Michigan
• In traveling RV, Michigan nurse tries to undo opioid damage she helped cause

Absent from his campaign, though, is acknowledgement of his record on opioid-related issues when he last served in Washington.

A Bridge Michigan investigation revealed that while in Congress from 2001-2015, Rogers was a leading advocate for greater access to pain medications, which are typically variations of opioids. He received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the same drug companies that now are paying billions of dollars in national opioid settlements for their roles in causing the epidemic.

Rogers was far from alone — there was a bipartisan, if minority, belief in  Congress that doctors were under-prescribing pain medications, and other politicians received drug company contributions too. Yet Rogers’ support of the drug industry was notable enough that he is referenced in at least one book about the opioid crisis, as well as multiple newspaper retrospectives of the epidemic. Rogers acknowledged in 2006 that drug companies considered him “a champion” of their industry.

Bridge on Monday asked the 61-year-old Rogers if he now wished he had taken a different approach to the opioid issue while in Congress.

“I understand that question is couched in a way that makes it sound terrible,” Rogers said during an online press conference hosted by his campaign. “I just disagree with the premise of the question.”

Rogers recounted how his brother suffered from chronic pain from more than 30 back surgeries, and pain medications were needed to make his life bearable until he died at age 60.

“Without that relief, the last 10 years of his life would have been, well, candidly, we wouldn't have had him for that last 10 years of his life,” Rogers said. “Every single day (he was) in intense pain where it was disabling for him to work (or) to pick up his kids.

“What we were doing (in Congress) is making sure that true chronic pain sufferers had access to drugs that would at least give some relief and hopefully allow them to spend some time with their family,” Rogers said. “There are a whole bunch of chronic pain sufferers out there that were going to get whacked around because people weren't paying attention (to their pain).”

What lessons can be learned from the action – or inaction – of Congress 20 years ago matters to the tens of thousands of Michigan families who’ve been torn apart by opioid addiction. And experts say Rogers, who wants to be Michigan’s next U.S. senator, could have done more in his role to temper the growing epidemic. 

“Congress was asleep at the wheel,” said Jonathan Stoltman, director of the Michigan-based Opioid Policy Institute, which tracks opioid settlement fund spending. “Mike Rogers contributed to the crisis.”

Opioid deaths skyrocket

Bridge has published more than three dozen articles this year chronicling the opioid epidemic and critical decisions Michigan leaders must make about how to use $1.6 billion in lawsuit settlement funds from pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors deemed partly responsible for the crisis.

Many of the people now in recovery who shared their stories with Bridge first became addicted through opioid prescriptions.

For example, Jolene Fassett’s descent into addiction began with an opioid prescription for pain given to her in 2004, when she was 18. “It was the time when they were pushing them (opioids),” she told Bridge in July.

Opioid prescriptions skyrocketed in the 2000s, when drug companies made a concerted effort to make pain elimination a medical priority. By 2011, opioids were the most commonly prescribed drug in America, more than antibiotics and high-cholesterol medications.

Some of those prescriptions led to addictions. For example, 45 percent of those who use heroin began with prescription opioids, according to the American Medical Association.

During that decade, Rogers was one of Congress’ leading advocates for increased access to pain care. In an examination of bill proposals, news releases, legislative updates, campaign finance records and articles written at the time, Bridge found:

• Rogers introduced the National Pain Care Policy Act in 2003, and again in 2005, and was co-sponsor of the same act in other years.    Rogers’ bills and those he co-sponsored included a range of mandates, from developing a pain care initiative for veterans, to assuring Medicare and Tricare (the health care plan for active-duty military) covered pain meds. It also would permit the federal government to offer grants to educate doctors on pain and palliative care. The bills did not include penalties for over-prescribing.
• Though it was early in the epidemic, addiction issues connected to new drugs like Oxycontin were no secret. The first lawsuit against opioid manufacturers was filed in 2000 in West Virginia, and the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report on oxycontin abuse in 2003, the year Rogers introduced his first pain bill.   
• According to an investigation by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity, Rogers campaign and leadership accounts received at least $310,000 in contributions from groups tied to the pharmaceutical industry between 2006-2015. Rogers explained the donations in 2016 by saying that, “I think they said, ‘This guy is a champion, he’s doing something we believe in and we want to support a guy like that.’”
• Rogers received $226,000 in donations from companies that are now paying Michigan and other states in settlements over their roles in the opioid crisis, including Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. You can see the totals here and here.
• He received $162,000 from seven opioid distributors that supplied 83 percent of all prescription opioids to Michigan between 2006 and 2019, according to a Washington Post report.

In television ads promoting his general election opponent, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Democrats have criticized Rogers for past campaign contributions by the pharmaceutical industry, but those ads have not noted his advocacy for increased opioid prescriptions. 

In written answers to additional questions from Bridge, Rogers drew a distinction between “pain management doctors who were treating chronic pain sufferers” and “an over-prescribing medical community.

“There is a difference, and it was a very underserved and misunderstood need in the medical community,” Rogers said.

‘A lot of blame to go around’

While Rogers was one of the biggest advocates of increased access to pain meds while he was in Congress, only one bill increasing access that he sponsored, co-sponsored or voted for was signed into law. The Veterans Pain Care Act of 2008 mandated that the Department of Veterans Affairs create a comprehensive pain care policy. The bill had broad bipartisan support, and was introduced by Democrat Tim Walz, a congressman from Minnesota who is now the party’s vice presidential nominee. 

“There are things the federal government could have done differently, but … a lot of us can say that. We were all doing what we thought was right.”

— Dr. Chad Brummett

Rogers’ pain bills over the years also drew some bipartisan support, including from Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who suffered from chronic pain.

In 2015, the same year Rogers left Congress, Dingell’s congressional seat was taken over by his wife, Debbie Dingell, who has been outspoken in her efforts to strike a balance with opioid policymaking.

“I have lived all sides of the opioid epidemic,” she wrote in a news release in 2018, one year before her husband passed away. “My father was addicted to opioids before anyone really knew what they were, and my sister died of a drug overdose. Yet my husband lives with chronic pain and needs opioids to live comfortably. We cannot let the pendulum swing too far in either direction.”

The line between prescribing too much of a potentially addictive drug and prescribing so little that it increases suffering is a tightrope doctors and policymakers continue to walk.

“I think there's a lot of blame to go around” for the opioid crisis, said Dr. Chad Brummett, co-director of the Opioid Research Institute and Overdose Prevention Engagement Network at the University of Michigan.

While he doesn’t hold Congress or federal agencies blameless, Brummett said physician practices also played a role in the crisis. He said it used to be common for doctors, including himself, to write prescriptions for more pills than were medically necessary to make sure patients “don’t run out.”

“We were told, if you had real pain, you couldn't become addicted,” he said, adding that it’s now known that is untrue.

Some of those prescriptions led to substance use disorder, Brummett acknowledges.

“There are things the federal government could have done differently, but I think a lot of us can say that,” Brummett said. “We were all doing what we thought was right.”

But in Rogers’ responses to Bridge, the former congressman declined to say whether Congress played a role in the crisis, putting the onus only on doctors and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

In a response from Rogers after this story first published, he said drug companies also share blame for the crisis.

When asked if he agreed that increased opioid prescriptions in the 2000s, which his bills urged, played a role in increased addictions, Rogers said: “The data clearly shows that doctors who were over prescribing were causing addiction in patients, but not all doctors, and certainly not all patients.

“Clearly the DEA needed to provide stronger enforcement on the ‘pill mills’ that created this huge problem,” Rogers said. ”Doctors abusing their ability to prescribe and lack of appropriate enforcement by the federal government are to blame.”

What separates Rogers from other policymakers at the time, according to his critics, was his close ties to pain foundations that were bankrolled by drug companies trying to increase sales of pain pills like Oxycontin. For example:

• The American Pain Society took part in Rogers’ first press conference about his National Pain Care Policy Act in 2003. That group was later forced to close after disclosures of its financial ties to drug companies and its role in encouraging opioid prescriptions.
• In 2006, a forum sponsored by the Pain Care Forum, titled “The Epidemic of Pain” asked for support for Rogers’ bills. Though doctors had been raising warning flags about opioid prescriptions for years, the briefing materials at the forum included the statement: “Appropriate use of opioid medications like oxycodone is safe and effective and unlikely to cause addiction to people who are under the care of a doctor and who have no history of substance abuse.” That’s now known not to be true. The Pain Care Forum was financially tied to Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, and was labeled by critics as an “echo chamber” for the drug companies   
• A 2020 congressional bipartisan report on the history of the opioid epidemic noted that Purdue Pharma donated $3.6 million to another group called the American Pain Foundation, which supported Rogers’ bills. That foundation shut down in 2012 in wake of a Senate investigation into its ties to drug manufacturers.

Rogers told Bridge he did not know at the time that those foundations were bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry.

Opportunity lost

Chris McGreal is a British journalist and author of a book on the history of the opioid epidemic, “American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts.” That book refers to Rogers as “among the principal beneficiaries of pharma’s largesse.”

In the 2000s and continuing today, there are three times more drug company lobbyists on Capitol Hill than members of Congress. Those lobbyists steered the debate from controlling opioids to assuring people in pain had access to them, McGreal told Bridge.

McGreal contends policymakers, including Rogers, were “steamrolled” by the drug companies into believing that only addicts were misusing opioid pain medications.

“Congress could have (said), ‘Let’s pause this mass prescribing and look at the effect of these drugs, which isn’t panning out in the long-term. We’re not seeing quality of life improved. We’re seeing dependency,’” McGreal said. “But Pharma said, ‘Don’t let the addicts take away (medications) from people in pain who need these drugs.’

“That’s when the opportunity (to curb the crisis) was lost.”

Going forward, Rogers said it’s “critically important for patients who are suffering from disabling and debilitating chronic pain that we get it right. When doctors are found to be abusing their prescribing authority, they should be dealt with and held accountable.”

With tenfold more people dying of opioid overdoses in Michigan than in the year 2000, McGreal doubts that lessons have been learned.

“Obviously there is a place for these drugs, they will be prescribed,” McGreal said. “But America is the only country that prescribes them in this way (so frequently). 

“My sense is this whole thing could happen again.”