GOOD DRUG NEWS

News about drug addiction is nearly always bad. Most often, it’s about a rampaging epidemic, ruined lives, devastated families and communities, overwhelmed authorities. With more than 30 overdose deaths from methadone in Maine this year and now a manslaughter charge brought against a Portland man who gave his methadone prescription to another man who died from the overdose, even the cure has a hard time getting good press.

This week did bring some good news. A new drug and new federal regulations could make treatment of heroin addiction more accessible, more affordable and more humane, making the chances of recovery more realistic.

The drug is buprenorphine, approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration. Like methadone, it is a drug that helps addicts quit heroin without bringing on withdrawal symptoms. Unlike methadone, it is considerably less mood-altering and can be formulated in such a way as to prevent abuse.

It is those advantages that led to the regulatory changes that put this drug in a less-restrictive category of controlled substances that make it available for office use by physicians trained in its use and working in partnership with government-approved treatment programs. This is a long way from over-the-counter treatment for heroin addiction, but a great improvement over the current regime of methadone centers.

The improvement is on two levels. First, the current system of methadone centers requires many addicts to relocate away from home, family and employment at the very time in their lives when stability, support and purpose are most needed. Second, some communities with methadone clinics – Portland is a prime example here in Maine – have found themselves attracting addicts not as interested in recovery as in continuing a habit through government means.

Treatment that allows the addict to stay home and that avoids creating its own abuse problem, alas, is not for everyone. Research and experience in other countries suggests that buprenorphine is most effective for the young, for those with short substance-abuse histories and for those on low levels of methadone. Fortunately, that is precisely the addict population with which Maine should be the most concerned. Maine is not wrestling with a decades-long heroin scourge; like many rural states, this is a recent phenomenon and its addicts are primarily young, short-term abusers.

This development on the medical- regulatory front has profound political implications. Methadone is a touchy subject, especially in communities where clinics are proposed or, like Bangor, where expansion of an existing clinic is planned. The availability of treatment that does not require centralized clinics for some addicts does not address the needs of all addicts, just as the current limitations of buprenorphene treatment do not mean that its use cannot be expanded as treatment methods are refined. The more the two sides in the ongoing and often-angry methadone debate acknowledge this, the better this news will be.