Last week I attended the ASAM State of the Art in Addiction Medicine Conference in Washington and one of the speakers was Gil Kerlikowske director of the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy). After his talk on the successes of the white house’s program, and the promise of the “2011 National drug control strategy” he was asked about elimination of the 30/100 patient limit plaguing buprenorphine providers, their patients and their loved ones. This was the only question of the conference met with spontaneous applause. Mr. Kerlikowske was caught by surprise and admitted he was completely uninformed about a limit, and gave no indication that he even knew anything about the legislation pertaining to buprenorphine. This is alarming in light of the new CDC reportshowing 40 people a day die from prescription opioid overdose, 15,000 a year (in 2008). Meanwhile, patients are being denied lifesaving treatment due to effective rationing of care through government imposed patient caps. A search of the ONDCP website shows ZERO results for a “Suboxone” or “Subutex” and only two mentions of “buprenorphine” which were only incidental mentions and not about buprenorphine.
Entries for month: November 2011
Nov 2