Thanks to the generous donation from the Corey Zwicker Memorial Washer Toss, GPDOTS will be a proud sponsor of the FED UP Rally in Washington DC. GPDOTS will have a table at the event to educate fellow advocates and the public on what initiatives GPDOTS has been working on in Canada and how they can help. We are happy to support our friends south of the border in their quest to end to the epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths attributed to opioids (including heroin) and other prescription drugs.

The Fed Up! Coalition calls on the federal government to take the following actions:

1. Take all measures necessary to ensure that opioids and other controlled drugs are prescribed more cautiously.

2. FDA should prohibit marketing of opioids for conditions where risks outweigh benefits (as required by the FD&C Act) and should cease the practice of approving new controlled drugs without an advisory committee review and recommendation.

3. Immediately reduce barriers to buprenorphine treatment.

4. Allocate significantly more funding for addiction treatment, especially in communities hit hardest by the epidemic.

5. Ensure that public and private health insurance carriers and the Veterans Health Administration provide adequate coverage for evidence-based addiction treatment.

6. Improve access to naloxone use and improve legal protection for individuals who administer it and/or call 911.

7. Incentivize states to make prescriber use of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) mandatory. These commonsense interventions could save countless lives and help bring this epidemic under control.