US Senate to Consider Lifting Buprenorphine Restrictions

Buprenorphine, a drug that has proven successful in treating heroin addiction, may be about to be more widely used. Buprenorphine has been used in the United States since 2000, when the Drug Addiction Treatment Act (DATA) allowed certified physicians to subscribe the drug in their offices (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/146/buprenorphine.shtml).

But DATA only allowed group practices to treat 30 patients at a time, and federal regulators interpreted the language broadly, so that HMOs and whole academic medical centers were interpreted as group practices.

Now, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has introduced a bill that would eliminate the cap on the number of patients that could be treated. Sens. Joe Biden (D-DE) and Carl Levin (D-MI) joined Hatch, the powerful chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in cosponsoring the bill, S. 1887. The bill is currently before the Judiciary Committee.

Regards,
Fred