Endless prescription: Suboxone, Subutex plaguing region
http://www.timesnews.net/Local/2016/07/03/An-endless-prescription-Suboxone-Subutex-becoming-an-epidemic-in-the-region.html?ci=stream&lp=1&p=1Suboxone. Subutex.
For many, they mean nothing. But they are at the heart of a disturbing trend which has seen people move to the area just to obtain them, caused doctors to leave other jobs to prescribe them and left hundreds of drug addicts with an endless prescription.
It is a problem law enforcement has seen explode in the last five years.
“We routinely arrest people for drug offenses and find them in possession of both buprenorphine (Suboxone or Subutex) and some other powerful narcotic (heroin, opiate-based pain pills, etc.) that buprenorphine is supposed to be weaning them off of. This phenomenon directly contradicts their intended purpose,” said Kingsport Police Department Public Information Officer Tom Patton.
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The intended use of buprenorphine, the main ingredient in Suboxone and Subutex, is to help people addicted to pain pills achieve sobriety by providing an alternative to their drug of choice. Counseling and therapy are supposed to be provided along with the prescription.
Over time, the dosage should be reduced gradually until the patient is completely drug free.
That is not happening.
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Patients are not the only ones getting in on the act. Doctors are reportedly leaving their current work to start prescribing buprenorphine.
“Greed is taking over,” said Dr. Randy Jessee, senior vice president of specialty services for Frontier Health. “We are hearing stories about doctors quitting their ER work, quitting their practice and going into the Suboxone business.”
According to the Department of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, there are 94 buprenorphine prescribers in the greater metro areas of Johnson City, Kingsport and Bristol. And that number could be an underestimate because prescribers decide whether they want to be listed in the DSAMH locator, according to the 2015 DSAMH “Medication-Assisted Treatment Substance Use Tool Guide.”
It would never be obvious to anyone driving around town that so many buprenorphine prescribers exist. There is a reason why.
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