"Dr. McCracken is still employed here, and no administrative action has been taken yet to affect his employment status," Buckelew said.
Police seized the drugs and paraphernalia from the couple's home, and McCracken was released Monday night on $100,000 bail pending a preliminary hearing Oct. 9.
"He probably didn't kill her," said Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Baltimore police, noting that there were no signs of foul play. But he said he found it ironic that "two pharmacy Ph.D.s were ordering drugs from an online pharmacy" overseas.
Such long-distance purchases are an increasingly common way of obtaining drugs that in the United States are either illegal, considered too expensive or available only by prescription. McCracken and John arranged to have their imports hidden in stuffed toys or disguised alongside toys and trinkets, Guglielmi said.
"We will be conferring with federal authorities" such as the Drug Enforcement Administration as to the legal ramifications of having drugs sent from abroad, Guglielmi said. "I think they'll be interested in talking to Mr. McCracken."
Guglielmi, who worked previously at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., said that online pharmacies present a grave risk to public safety.
"These potent drugs are regulated for a reason," he said, "and people shouldn't shortcut the medical process and self-medicate."
Introduced in 2003, buprenorphine - prescribed as Suboxone for treatment of addiction - is often misused, according to a series of articles in The Baltimore Sun in December 2007. Health officials said addicts were injecting or snorting the narcotic to mute cravings for heroin and opiate-based pain pills such as OxyContin.
Experts said bupe is 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. Some patients sell the pills on the street for up to $50 each, said Michael Gimbel, former director of Baltimore County's Bureau of Substance Abuse.
"Because [the pills] are expensive, many people have turned to the Internet to purchase bupe from other countries and getting them much cheaper," Gimbel said. "Obviously, quality is not guaranteed, and that may be what killed the doctor."
On the street, bupe pills are known as "subbies" or "stop signs," an allusion to their hexagon-like shape. Fatalities have been reported in India, Pakistan and other countries as a result of black-market bupe, which is usually mixed with some kind of tranquilizer and injected.
