The opioid crisis really began with prescription pills, then moved into heroin, and now synthetic fentanyl, which presents a particularly high risk of overdose.

The Suboxone helps. I don’t have cravings.

And I think that repealing the X-waiver isn’t entirely going to open the floodgates for prescribers who want to prescribe buprenorphine. There’s still some education and some stigma that needs to be addressed before more people are going to be willing to prescribe.

So first of all, in order to write a prescription for buprenorphine, you have to get something called an X-waiver, which means that you have to take an eight-hour training program and you have to apply to the D.E.A. to get a special waiver.

And one unintended consequence of the crisis is that many people who have legitimate need for pain management and who have never abused those drugs now find it much harder to get the medicine they need

it might actually kind of remind people that they could sell this medication.

So bring it right back here to your community health center and we’ll give you a $10 gift card.”

So when the prescription market contracted by regulation and policies, you had a big opportunity for these other people to come in with higher quality and lower-priced product..

Oxycontin was a time-released version of oxycodone that Purdue aggressively marketed to the medical community, saying it “might” be less addictive than other opioids.

economic cost of prescription-opioid abuse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently put that number at nearly $80 billion a year,