Pediatric group says doctors should treat teen opioid addicts with medicine

Jennifer Weiss-Burke knew there was a potentially life-saving medication for her 15-year-old son, who became addicted to painkillers and heroin after a sports injury. Yet she had to call dozens of doctors before finding one to prescribe it.

“No other disease is treated this way,” said Weiss-Burke, whose son died of an overdose in 2011. "If you had diabetes you wouldn’t be told to start standing in line to get insulin.”

The medication, buprenorphine, is used to treat addiction to opioids, such as heroin or prescription painkillers. It can suppress withdrawal symptoms, decrease cravings and cut the risk of relapse.

Studies show that buprenorphine and other forms of "medication-assisted treatment," such as methadone, cut the risk of death in half from all causes — from overdoses to car accidents.

The American Academy of Pediatrics urged its members Monday to consider prescribing buprenorphine or other medicines to treat opioid addiction. If pediatricians don't prescribe the drugs themselves, they should refer patients to doctors who do.

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Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has called such prescriptions "an essential component of an ongoing treatment plan" that allow people to "regain control of their health and lives."

At the Serenity Mesa Recovery Center for youth in Albuquerque, where Weiss-Burke is executive director, doctors prescribe buprenorphine as part of its therapy program.

"Medically assisted treatment allows us to be able to give that person hope and see their life differently," Weiss-Burke said. "When heroin is not constantly on their mind, that's when the therapy can happen, that's when you can start changing their perception and life."

But prescribing buprenorphine isn't as simple as other drugs.

Federal law tightly restricts access to such medications to prevent them from being diverted for illegal use. Methadone, for example, can be dispensed only by special clinics. Doctors must undergo training before being certified to prescribe buprenorphine.

Until recently, doctors could treat no more than 100 people at a time with buprenorphine, so physicians had time to properly monitor patients. In July, the Obama administration increased that limit to 275 patients in an effort to get more people into treatment.

Federal officials have called opioid addiction a national crisis.

The death rate from drug overdoses more than doubled from 1999 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drug overdoses now kill nearly 44,000 Americans a year — more than car accidents.

Among those ages 12 to 25, illicit opioid use more than doubled between 1991 and 2012. Yet 90% of drug-addicted youth ages 12 to 17 get no treatment at all, according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

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Some critics say taking buprenorphine doesn't cure addiction.

During hearings on the opioid crisis, U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said opioid addicts who take buprenorphine are simply substituting one drug for another. Murphy, a child psychologist, also has voiced concern that addicts are illegally selling buprenophine to pay for their heroin habit.

Pharmaceutical companies have worked to develop forms of buprenorphine that can't be re-sold. In May, the Food and Drug Administration approved Probuphine, the first form of buprenorphine to be implanted, which provides a constant, low-level dose of the drug for six months.