Republican Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers is once again trying to dodge scrutiny over his deep congressional ties to the opioid industry — a record that helped sink his last Senate run and is now resurfacing as he faces Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
During his time representing Michigan's 8th District in the early 2000s, Rogers built much of his legislative identity around a bill backed heavily by pharmaceutical interests, Drop Site News reported. His signature legislation, the National Pain Care Policy Act, first introduced in 2003, would have poured federal money into new research infrastructure and a public messaging campaign built around expanding, not restricting, access to opioid treatment, all while the national overdose death toll kept climbing.
The push was shaped in close coordination with industry-funded advocacy groups, including the American Pain Society and the Pain Care Forum, both later shown to be substantially bankrolled by Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers eager to normalize wider prescribing.
Asked recently by Michigan Bridge whether he regretted his approach to the opioid crisis, Rogers brushed off the question, saying, "I just disagree with the premise."
Rogers has since tried reframing his record, insisting his work simply helped patients access needed pain treatment while maintaining safeguards against addiction. But large portions of his bill eventually got folded into the Affordable Care Act in 2010, creating federal pain research committees that were, in turn, staffed heavily by researchers and doctors with financial ties to opioid manufacturers.
Jonathan Stoltman, director of the Opioid Policy Institute, didn't mince words about Rogers' legacy, saying, "At the end of the day, he was either stupid, an industry stooge, or both."
Rogers pivoted away from health policy entirely in 2011, taking over as chair of the House Intelligence Committee before leaving Congress in 2015 to consult for tech and defense companies, just as the industry groups he'd worked alongside began collapsing under regulatory scrutiny and eventual multibillion-dollar litigation.
El-Sayed, his opponent, managed the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017.