WASHINGTON -- Amid growing illegal sales and abuse of buprenorphine, top federal officials outlined yesterday action they might take to curb problems with the addiction-treatment drug, including more precise detection methods, improved training of doctors and stronger warning labels for patients.
"The issue of diversion has been out there since 2004," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, which oversees the federal government's buprenorphine initiative. "We've been concerned about that, and we will continue to be concerned about that."
Clark spoke to reporters after a two-day, closed-door summit of experts on buprenorphine, which the government sees as the best medical treatment for hundreds of thousands of people addicted to heroin or painkillers.
Introduced in 2003, the drug known as "bupe" has been subject to increasing misuse and illegal sales as more of it is prescribed by physicians, The Sun reported in a series of articles beginning in December. Some patients sell it on the street; buyers use it to get high or hold off withdrawal symptoms until they can get their next heroin or painkiller hit.
With tens of thousands of opiate addicts in Maryland, Baltimore and state officials are investing millions of dollars in bupe treatment. Experts say it's safer than methadone - the traditional heroin treatment, normally given out under close supervision - and more likely to appeal to addicts because they can get bupe from their doctors.
Though Clark and other officials said they are encouraged that bupe has expanded access to drug treatment, they acknowledged publicly for the first time a need to tighten safeguards over use of the drug, sold mainly under the name Suboxone.
Suboxone was developed as a joint project by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Richmond, Va. An estimated 170,000 addicts are taking it.
Many patients and doctors say that bupe pills are extremely effective in curbing withdrawal sickness and help ease cravings for heroin or prescription opiates.
The Sun's articles identified a variety of problems the government hadn't acknowledged when it approved buprenorphine. Some users crush and inject the drug, a dangerous practice because it can spread diseases. Many experts told the newspaper that an eight-hour training course required for doctors who prescribe bupe is not adequate and that some physicians are contributing to illegal sales of the narcotic substitute by prescribing it too generously.
