To help addiction treatment, lawmakers are telling the DEA to stop processing buprenorphine

Two Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Drug Enforcement Administration to take a more lenient approach to regulating buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction.

“Bupe,” also known by the brand name Suboxone, is one of two medications currently approved to treat opioid cravings and withdrawal. And while it’s associated with a 38% reduction in opioid-related death risk, it’s still classified because it’s chemically an opioid — and, therefore, heavily monitored by the DEA.

But a new bill introduced this week by Sen. Martin Heinrich (DN.M.) and Rep. Paul Tonko (DN.Y.) will force the federal police to stop monitoring buprenorphine the same way they monitor its energy. pain relievers.

“We need every possible way to deal with this epidemic as quickly as possible, including removing the barriers that providers and patients face to accessing life-saving medicines,” Heinrich said in a statement. “My legislation aims to change the reporting requirements for buprenorphine, to ensure that patients receive timely and effective treatment for opioid use disorder. This will help save lives and help New Mexicans to get the care they need.”

This law is called the Expanded Use of Proven and Effective Treatment for Recovery – the “BUPE Act,” for short. It requires the DEA administrator to release buprenorphine from the agency’s Suspicious Order Reporting System, which the agency created in 2019 to combat the oversupply of painkillers after the first wave of the opioid epidemic.

But lawmakers argue that SORS may backfire, at least when it comes to buprenorphine. Instead of helping to curb the oversupply of painkillers known to cause addiction, some drug policy experts now say the DEA system has made it harder to find the drugs themselves. to cure the addiction.

By 2019, prescription opioids had declined, and overdoses caused by painkillers had begun to decline from their peak in mid-2017. of opioid deaths, in contrast, was increasing due to illegal fentanyl.

Because of changes in the drug supply and the current drivers of overdose deaths, lawmakers now argue that the DEA’s strict requirements are restricting access to life-saving drugs amid the deadly overdose epidemic.

Although the Biden administration has made access to buprenorphine a cornerstone of its response to the opioid crisis, patients seeking the medication continue to report that it is very difficult to obtain, largely because few doctors prescribe it and it’s half of the drug stores. In a press release, Heinrich’s office argued that “SORS reporting requirements have led to uncertainty among pharmacies and retailers in stocking and dispensing buprenorphine.”

The legislation would require the DEA to exclude buprenorphine from SORS until the end of a public health emergency related to the opioid crisis, first announced by President Trump in 2017 and later extended it’s his administration and President Biden.

Once the public health emergency ends, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services will conduct a review to see if buprenorphine should be reintroduced.

Many major medical groups have endorsed this law, including the American Medical Association, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the American Pharmacists Association, and Faces and Voices of Recovery.

The introduction of the bill comes amid a wide-ranging debate involving buprenorphine and the DEA — specifically, the controversial regulations governing whether health care providers should be allowed to dispense the drug over the phone.

Heinrich and Tonko’s legislation adds further pressure for the agency, which has already faced a barrage of criticism from lawmakers and addiction treatment groups, pushback from the Department of Health and Human Services, and several pieces of legislation that would undercut its efforts to ban the prescription of buprenorphine via telehealth.

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