BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – The FDA has approved a new non-opioid painkiller, a potentially significant step in the challenging science of pain management.

In addition to the help this breakthrough promises the estimated 50 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain, the newly approved drug could make an impact on the persistent problem of fentanyl addiction.

It’s called suzetrigine and its manufacturer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, is marketing it as Journavx.

It’s not an opioid, so it’s not addictive. That’s a breakthrough, because an estimated 3% to 19 percent of people who take prescription pain medications develop an addiction to them. And when the prescription ends, addicts turn to street drugs – and that means fentanyl, which kills with alarming frequency.

Almost 1,200 people in Kern County have died from fentanyl overdoses since 2018, including 171 in 2024 and an all-time high of 294 the year before, according to updated numbers from the Kern County Coroner’s Office.

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Dr. Raul Ayala of Adventist Health Bakersfield said Journavx could be an important breakthrough. We’ll know just how big a breakthrough when it actually becomes available.

“It’s a breakthrough where we haven’t had a non-opioid medication that’s used for moderate to severe pain,” Ayala said. “So I think this is a good medication and breakthrough for all of us in care right now.”

Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, a physician, has been educating the public about fentanyl addiction for years.

“I applaud the effort to try to bring more and more non-addictive medications” into widespread use, she said. “Really getting to the focus of the problem in America – the problem of addiction.”

Journavx relieves pain by targeting a sodium channel specific to the body’s pain neurons rather than strictly the brain. The medication therefore avoids the addictive potential of opioids. And that’s good news for the world’s chronic pain sufferers. Yet to be determined — pricing, whether insurances will cover it, and when it might actually become available.

Dr. Ayala’s best advice — ask your doctor.

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