buprenorphine

As have the opioids buprenorphine and Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone), which are genuinely useful treatments for addiction and have much lower risks of abuse.

FYI- Suboxone is actually buprenorphine combined with naloxone whereas Subutex is only buprenorphine.

When Suboxone is taken sublingually as indicated, the buprenorphine is absorbed and naloxone is not.

Similarly, heroin addicts are often prescribed synthetic opiates such as methadone and buprenorphine, to prevent their reliance on dealers.

Another benefit of buprenorphine is that it has a ceiling effect in relation to respiratory depression.

Causality is hard to tease out here, but more importantly, all they're doing is decriminalizing it and offering methadone/buprenorphine maintenance treatments.

Yes, but the person has to want to make the change, since the ‘lower tier drug’ (buprenorphine) doesn’t get them high.

Not even $10: one tablet of buprenorphine costs like $1 at the pharmacy.

They're also looking into using buprenorphine (which I take daily as suboxone as treatment for my previous addiction) for depression.

Even when a sleep study objectively showed the damage the buprenorphine was doing, I was told it's that or nothing.

There are other medications for maintenance like buprenorphine and naltrexone.

They're still the best (and sometimes the only effective) treatment for a huge number of people, and some new opioids like buprenorphine/combos like Suboxone have real advantages.

Currently, buprenorphine is the "right" drug to be addicted to, but even its makers started advertising its high addictive potential (in an attempt to push their new "safer" version, which is still under patent protection and therefore more profitable[2]).

We could list a ton of drugs I'd rank higher on the safety spectrum than opioids in terms of both short and long-term effects, with opioids only "redeeming" quality being their instant reverse agent (naloxone) or partial reverse agents (pentazocine or buprenorphine).

At some point, we can only imagine that Reckitt Benckiser (the makers) will have milked as much as they can out of the drug, and we will declare buprenorphine a "bad" drug to be addicted to, just like heroin, and treat its addiction with the latest shiny, new drug.

It's a meaningless anecdote, but a recent newsworthy drug bust around here was a prescription pill ring (Buprenorphine/Suboxone).

Buprenorphine (with or without added naloxone) has no such restriction, and can be dispensed from a normal pharmacy in 30-day supplies.

Buprenorphine’s dose/response curve for respiratory depression and sedation turns flat after ~24mg, which makes the drug very difficult to overdose on.