Police seizures of buprenorphine increased rapidly in Baltimore City and County in 2007, the same year that local and state government began spending millions to expand use of the narcotic to treat opiate addicts, police drug lab data show.
The numbers provide evidence of growing illegal sales and abuse of buprenorphine, a trend seen nationally.
This month in Wise County, Va., authorities arrested seven people suspected of dealing buprenorphine, which is sold mainly as Suboxone.
"I think [buprenorphine is] the fad; it's the latest thing on the block," said Dr. J. Ramsay Farah, past president of the Maryland Society of Addiction Medicine. "People who are on drugs like to experiment with new things."
Doctors prescribe Suboxone to help ease addicts' withdrawal symptoms and mute their cravings for heroin and opiate-based pain pills such as OxyContin. But some people can get high on the drug, especially if they crush the pills and inject or snort them. A series published by The Sun in December disclosed how the growth of Suboxone prescribing has fueled illegal sales, mainly because some patients are selling pills.
Even though the trade in Suboxone is a fraction of the market for heroin and cocaine, police are noticing. A Baltimore Police Department document distributed to officers last month noted Suboxone's abuse potential and stated that the pills are widely available for $5 to $10.
Officers submit substances they seize in arrests to their drug labs. Lab data provide an important indicator of which pharmaceuticals are being sold illegally.
For the first time since Suboxone was introduced in 2003, city and county police labs examined more buprenorphine cases last year than methadone, an older and far more abundant opiate treatment medicine.
In 2007, Baltimore's police lab handled 182 cases of buprenorphine seizures, a 214 percent increase from the 58 cases it processed in 2006. Methadone submissions decreased 45 percent, to 61 cases. Oxycodone, whose main brand OxyContin has been widely abused, was identified in 222 cases, a 6.7 percent increase.
Baltimore County's drug lab processed 65 buprenorphine cases last year, a 103 percent increase from 2006. Cases involving methadone increased 12 percent, to 46, while Oxycodone submissions rose 15 percent, to 176 cases.
Officials cannot say how many criminal cases arose from Suboxone seizures. Court records do not catalog them by drug name.
