Citing downstream costs and potential consequences for patients, lobbyists for opioid manufacturers and pharmacies pushed back Wednesday against a bill that would charge major drugmakers for pills they sell in Delaware.

Opponents of the measure told members of a Senate committee that pharmacies and consumers would end up paying the cost of the proposal, which aims to create a two-tier “impact fee” on pharmaceutical firms that produce the highest-strength and most widely distributed opioid products available for sale in the state.

The fee is expected to generate $8 million over three years, with the proceeds marked for a special fund to pay for treatment and prevention services. The surcharge would only kick in above a certain threshold, based on a formula used to calculate the strength of the drugs.

Supporters say the fee would not substantially increase the cost of opioids for consumers, but would require drug manufacturers to help fund Delaware's response to the opioid epidemic, which has been linked to 112 opioid-related deaths in 2016 alone.

“The principle behind this bill is that if you bring a substance into our state that has a widespread, detrimental effect on our residents, then you are responsible for a share of the the government's response to that effect,” the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Stephanie Hansen, D-Middletown, said at the hearing.

However, Christopher V. DiPietro, a lobbyist for EPIC Pharmacies Inc., a consortium of independently owned pharmacies across the state, said drugmakers are “not going to pay one penny” of the contemplated fee. Independent pharmacies, he said, operate on very thin margins, and nothing in the bill would prevent costs from being passed down the distribution chain.

“What that means is that some form of either patients, pharmacies … or carriers are going to have to bear the burden of paying this tax,” DiPietro said.

Debbie Hamilton, a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, said the bill has the potential to increase the cost of opioids for “legitimate patients,” who are prescribed medications for pain relief.

“No medication should be subject to a tax or fee. As a matter of good and sound health policy, Delaware does not tax any of these,” she said.

Hansen has disputed that her bill would increase the price of prescription opioids in Delaware because prices for the drugs are set nationally, but she did acknowledge that individual firms could still pass the costs off on consumers.

However, she said, the overall fee is “very low” compared to the profits that companies make off their products, and it would be more cost-effective for companies to just pay the fee, rather than alter the way they do business.

Under the proposal, the fee would only be imposed on manufacturers whose products in Delaware exceed 100,000 morphine milligram equivalents, or MME, in a given quarter. Producers of name-brand drugs would pay a fee of one cent per MME contained in each pill. For generic drug-makers, the levy would total one-quarter of a cent for every MME sold in the the First State.

According to the bill's fiscal note, the impact fee is expected to generate $2.8 million in the 2020 fiscal year and $2.7 million and $2.5 million in the next two years, respectively.

That revenue would go to a designated “prescription opioid impact fund” to finance addiction-prevention and opioid-addiction services, including paying for overdose-reversing drugs, treatment programs, sober-living facilities and services for the under- and uninsured.

A proposed amendment from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services being circulated Wednesday would also allow funding to be directed to “wrap-around services,” such as care coordinators, peer coaches, community health workers and integrated data systems.