Two Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Drug Enforcement Administration to take a more lax approach to regulating buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction.
‘Bupe’, also known by the brand name Suboxone, is one of only two medications currently approved to treat opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. And while it has been linked to a 38% reduction in the risk of death from opioids, it remains stigmatized because chemically it is an opioid – and therefore heavily scrutinized by the DEA.
But a new legislative proposal introduced this week by Senator Martin Heinrich (DN.M.) and Representative Paul Tonko (DN.Y.) would force the federal government’s drug enforcement agency to withdraw from monitoring buprenorphine in the same way that she checks more powerful medications. prescription painkillers.
“We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackle this epidemic with the urgency it demands, including removing barriers that healthcare providers and patients face in accessing life-saving medicines,” Heinrich said in a statement . “My legislation aims to change the reporting requirements for buprenorphine so that patients receive timely and effective treatment for their opioid use disorder. This will help save lives and help New Mexicans get the care they need.”
The legislation is called the Broadening Utilization of Proven and Effective Treatment for Recovery Act, or the “BUPE Act” for short. It requires the DEA administrator to exempt buprenorphine from the agency’s Suspicious Order Reporting System, which the agency created in 2019 to combat the oversupply of painkillers following the first wave of the opioid epidemic.
But lawmakers argue that SORS may now be backfiring, at least when it comes to buprenorphine. Instead of helping prevent the oversupply of painkillers known to cause addiction, some drug policy experts now say the DEA system has made it more difficult to access the drugs used to treat these addictions. to deal with.
By 2019, prescription opioid volumes had already plummeted and fatal overdoses due to prescription painkillers began to disappear from the list. peak in mid-2017. In contrast, a large majority of opioid deaths were increasingly caused by illicit fentanyl.
Given the changes in drug supply and the current causes of overdose deaths, lawmakers now argue that the DEA’s strict requirements are blocking access to life-saving medications amid a deadly overdose epidemic.
Although the Biden administration has made access to buprenorphine a cornerstone of its opioid crisis response, patients seeking the drug still report it is prohibitively difficult to obtain, largely because few doctors prescribe it and barely half of pharmacies has it in stock. In a press release, Heinrich’s office argued that “SORS reporting requirements have created uncertainty among pharmacies and distributors regarding the inventory and dispensing of buprenorphine.”
The legislation requires the DEA to exclude buprenorphine from SORS until the end of the public health emergency related to the opioid crisis, which was first declared by President Trump in 2017 and subsequently extended by his and the President’s administration Biden.
Once the public health emergency ends, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services would conduct a review to see if buprenorphine should be reinstated.
A number of major medical groups have already endorsed the legislation, including the American Medical Association, American Society of Addiction Medicine, American Pharmacists Association and Faces and Voices of Recovery.
The bill’s introduction comes amid a broader controversy involving buprenorphine and the DEA — specifically a set of controversial rules governing whether healthcare providers can prescribe the medication via telehealth.
Heinrich and Tonko’s legislation adds yet another layer of pressure on the agency, which is already facing a barrage of criticism from lawmakers and addiction treatment groups, pushback from the Department of Health and Human Services, and multiple pieces of legislation that would effectively undermine his attempt to limit buprenorphine prescribing via telehealth.
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