Buprenorphine / Naloxone

I believe in complete abstinence.

You're like, You know, but that doesn't mean that I have to be a dick when you come in on Suboxone or anything like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

After I did this job, which was done in concert with the Child Support Enforcement Program, I moved into the Attorney General's Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control, a law enforcement office that prosecutes doctors for fraud on that system.

I inherited a caseload with my team that had a remarkable number of physicians who practice addiction treatment medicine, primarily running methadone and suboxone clinics, who were operating their clinics as essentially glorified drug dealing operations.

These were white collar legally authorized drug distributors who would write the maximum number of prescriptions at the maximum amount of doses, presigned prescription pads, hand them to their nurses, go off to the Caribbean for a month while the nurse would just have a cattle call every morning handing out Suboxone prescriptions.

I had uh county leaders elected and civic call and say we are being flooded with this medication there's a suboxone clinic everywhere you turn around and i came to the conclusion that while suboxone and methadone are essential tools to have to treat addiction that they were causing these practitioners as much addiction through what was the administration of the safe high as they were as was being legitimately treated by physicians who were doing it properly In 2021, the Kentucky legislature set up the Kentucky Opioid Commission, which had as its job the administration and oversight of the state settlements achieved with opioid manufacturers and distributors for their role in creating the epidemic.

I was recruited by then Attorney General Daniel Cameron to run that commission.

So I would, I would use those figures again, previously quoted, you know, if you, if you take what we currently have, which is, you know, 30 day inpatient treatment is $36,000 and then 90 day intensive outpatient treatment is $72,000.

That's $108,000.

just to get a person off the street and rehabilitated to a baseline to take their Suboxone properly every day.

I'll just leave it at that.

Um, but then I, I've still been doing the same stuff, and now I've met some people where they, uh, they're on Suboxone, so I can maybe buy that on the side if I need to, and I'm just doing whatever to manage.

Yeah.

You know? And, like, I, I'm-

Yeah, you would've been fucked.

But I was just like, "Well, that's not an option.

What, what else do they have?" But, and he told me they, you know, prescribed Suboxone and that shit, too.

So I was like, "Well, great.