Thread by @urbanfatbiker

@DEEGILES0410 "total resolution relating to the marketing of Suboxone is more than $2 billion — the largest-ever resolution in a case brought by the Department of Justice involving an opioid drug."

Suboxone, the newest and most effective gateway drug, 'Prison Heroin', easy to smuggle.

@DEEGILES0410 "Buprenorphine emergency department (ED) visits for nonmedical use of the drug have increased fivefold from 2005 to 2011 – up to more than 20,000 ED visits involving buprenorphine products for nonmedical purposes.."

Thanks to Indivior.

americanaddictioncenters.org/suboxone/get-h…

@DEEGILES0410 "Suboxone may also be becoming a preferred drug of abuse for individuals seeking an opioid-like high, and many may be choosing this drug over other opioids."

EXACTLY as Kolodny intended when he started pushing Suboxone in 2005.

@DEEGILES0410 A lot of history behind this drug. First tested on addicts in one of the last captive human clinical trials, funded by FDA, with exceptions made to Federal laws banning narcotics scripts to addicts.

nytimes.com/2013/11/17/hea…

@DEEGILES0410 I'm curious how much of the 'synthetic opioid' deaths noted as rx were caused by Suboxone!

"CDC does not track buprenorphine deaths, most medical examiners do not routinely test for it, and neither do most emergency rooms, prisons, jails and drug courts.

@DEEGILES0410 "original advocates of buprenorphine, though, wanted to make addiction treatment mainstream rather than segregate addicts in clinics that became lightning rods for community opposition. They wanted doctors in offices to prescribe it, just like any other take-home medication."

@DEEGILES0410 "So Mr. O’Keeffe found “influential members of Congress interested in doing this”: Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, with support from Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware."

No comment.

@DEEGILES0410 With approval, the drug-peddler Kolodny went to work.

"Dr. Kolodny, then a New York City health official, crisscrossed the city with colleagues to spread the word about the new medication, entice public hospitals to try it with $10,000 rewards and urge doctors to get certified."

@DEEGILES0410 "In 2011, emergency room visits for the nonmedical use of buprenorphine were estimated at 21,483, nearly five times what they were in 2006. Also in 2011, poison centers recorded 3,625 cases of toxic buprenorphine exposure, nearly five times as high as the previous year."

@DEEGILES0410 “What we’re seeing here in Delta County is really troubling,” said Steven C. Parks, a prosecuting attorney in Michigan. “Arrest after arrest of people who are possessing or abusing Suboxone, who don’t have a prescription for it, who are shooting it up and who are snorting it.”