Mental health advocates and a pharmaceutical company joined Tuesday to urge Kansas legislators to endorse a bill adjusting state law to allow physicians to prescribe drugs with amphetamines as ingredients to treat binge eating disorders.
The objective is to clear a path in Kansas for a drug developed by Shire and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2015 for moderate-to-severe binge eating disorders in adults. Forty-five states allow Vyvanse to be prescribed, but a 1984 Kansas law made that problematic by blocking certain prescriptions containing amphetamines.
The Kansas Board of Healing Arts relied on its authority to issue a waiver in August to enable dispensing of the drug.
A bill introduced at behest of Shire and pending in the Senate would make that treatment option part of state law, said Bob Williams, executive director of the Kansas Association of Osteopathic Medicine.
Under Senate Bill 465, the list of approved treatment through use of a controlled substance would be adjusted to add binge eating disorder as well as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder.
“When we heard about the need for legislation to be passed so doctors would be able to better treat binge eating disorder among adults, we gladly supported the initiative,” said Sharon Manson, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Johnson County.
Ted Buckley, a representative of Shire, said Kansas law “put our patients and their access to treatment at risk.” Work is proceeding in Kansas, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Ohio to amend and clarify regulations to improve availability of the medication, he said.
“We believe that guaranteeing access to this FDA-approved treatment option is the right thing to do,” Buckley said.
