Can Cannabis Be Used to Treat Opioid Addiction?

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Canadian researchers – with funding from U.S. taxpayers – are proposing a novel treatment for opioid use disorder: Cannabis.

In a paper published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) say cannabis could help people being treated for opioid addiction by reducing their risk of exposure to illicit fentanyl and other street drugs.

The finding is based on urine drug tests of 819 people being treated for opioid addiction in Vancouver, BC, the first major city in North America to experience an outbreak of fentanyl-related overdoses. Addiction treatment usually involves taking opioid agonist drugs (OATs) such as buprenorphine or methadone.

The researchers found that over half the participants (53%) tested positive for fentanyl, suggesting they were still using street drugs. Those who tested positive for THC -- the psychoactive compound in cannabis -- were about 10 percent less likely to have fentanyl in their urine.

"These new findings suggest that cannabis could have a stabilizing impact for many patients on treatment, while also reducing the risk of overdose," said lead author Eugenia Socías, MD, a clinician scientist at BCCSU. "With overdoses continuing to rise across the country, these findings highlight the urgent need for clinical research to evaluate the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids as adjunctive treatment to OAT to address the escalating opioid overdose epidemic."

Socias and her colleagues say cannabis may play an important role in keeping people in addiction treatment programs. Previous research at BCCSU found that drug users initiating OAT who used cannabis daily were about 21 percent more likely to be retained in treatment after six months than non-cannabis users. People who stay in treatment face much lower risks of dying from an overdose, acquiring HIV or suffering other harms of drug use.

‘Gateway Drug’

The research at UBC and BCCSU was funded, in part, by grants from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIH has taken a dim view of cannabis in the past, calling marijuana a “gateway drug” for some users, particularly adolescents. A 2015 study funded by NIH found that nearly a third of those who use marijuana develop some degree of marijuana use disorder.

“Whether smoking or otherwise consuming marijuana has therapeutic benefits that outweigh its health risks is still an open question that science has not resolved,” said Nora Volkow, MD, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Public health officials in British Columbia have proposed some controversial solutions to the opioid crisis, including decriminalization of all illicit drugs. A treatment center in Vancouver currently provides diacetylmorphine -- prescription heroin – to drug users to keep them from using street heroin that is often laced with fentanyl, a synthethic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research recently approved funding for a pilot study in Vancouver to evaluate cannabis as an adjunct therapy to OAT.

"Scientists are only just beginning to understand the role cannabis might play in supporting people's well-being, particularly those who use other substances," said co-author M-J Milloy, PhD, the Canopy Growth professor of cannabis science at UBC. "This study will help us understand if and how cannabis might have a role in addressing the overdose crisis."

Some Pharmacies Won’t Sell Suboxone, But Street Dealers Do

By Nina Feldman, WHYY

Louis Morano knew what he needed, and he knew where to get it.

He made his way to a mobile medical clinic parked on a corner of Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, in the geographical heart of the city’s overdose crisis. People call it “the bupe bus.”

Buprenorphine is a drug that curbs cravings and treats the symptoms of withdrawal from opioid addiction. One of the common brand name drugs that contains it, Suboxone, blends buprenorphine with naloxone. Combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, it is one of the three FDA-approved medicines considered the gold standard for opioid-addiction treatment.

Morano had tried Suboxone before — he had purchased some from a street dealer and had used it to get through his workday, when he couldn’t use heroin. It kept the misery of withdrawal sickness at bay.

Morano, 29, has done seven stints in rehab for opioid addiction in the past 15 years. So he had a sense of how the drug would make him feel. He’d always sort of thought of it as a crutch. But after a slip following his latest stint in rehab, he said, he committed to recovery.

“I can’t do this anymore, and I need something,” Morano said.

The bupe bus — a project of Prevention Point Philadelphia, the city’s only syringe exchange program — is part of Philadelphia’s efforts to expand access to this particular form of medication-assisted treatment, known as MAT, for opioid addiction.

Morano was first in line at the mobile clinic. When the doors of the bus heaved open, Dr. Ben Cocchiaro waved Morano inside, where they squeezed into a tiny exam room.

Cocchiaro and Morano discussed how buprenorphine might help Morano’s recovery succeed this time, and whether he’d be open to seeing a therapist. Cocchiaro gave Morano instructions on how to take the medication, and then called a pharmacy to authorize a prescription.

Barriers to Treatment

To date, much of the research on barriers to buprenorphine access has focused on the fact that too few medical providers are certified to write the prescriptions. According to federal law, doctors must apply for a special waiver from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, to prescribe buprenorphine. To get the waiver, a doctor must undergo eight hours of training — and can prescribe the drug to a maximum of 30 patients at a time, to start. Given these constraints, many doctors don’t bother.

But pharmacists are also a part of the problem. Because they fill the prescriptions, pharmacists are the gatekeepers for the drug, and not all of them are willing to take on that role. Increasing pharmacists’ involvement in distributing buprenorphine might be just as important as persuading more doctors to prescribe it, according to Dan Ventricelli of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.

“We can write a bunch of prescriptions for people,” he said. “But if they don’t have a pharmacy and a pharmacist that’s willing to fill that medication for them, fill it consistently and have an open conversation with that patient throughout that treatment process, then we may end up with a bottleneck at the community pharmacy.”

Just a few blocks from the bupe bus in Kensington, Richard Ost owns an independent pharmacy. He said his store was one of the first in the neighborhood to stock buprenorphine. But after a while, Ost started noticing that people were not using the medication as directed — they were selling it instead.

Buprenorphine acts as a partial opioid agonist, which means it’s a low-grade opioid. When taken in pill or tablet form, it’s unlikely to cause the same feelings of euphoria as heroin would, but it might if it were dissolved and injected. Many people buy it on the street for the same reason Morano did: to keep from going into withdrawal between injecting heroin or fentanyl. Others buy it to try to quit using on their own.

“We started seeing people do it in our store in front of us,” said Ost. He said it’s unethical to dispense a prescription if a patient turns around and sells it illegally, rather than use it. “Once we saw that with a patient, we terminated them as a patient.”

Ost explained that the illegal market for Suboxone also meant customers trying to stay sober were being continually targeted and tempted.

“So if we were having a lot of people in recovery coming out of our stores, the people who were dealing illicit drugs knew that, and they would be there to talk to them and they would say, ‘Well, I’ll give you this’ or ‘I’ll give you that,’ or ‘I’ll buy your Suboxone’ or ‘I’ll trade you for this.’”

Ost said that eventually his staff didn’t feel safe, and that neither did the customers. He understands the value of bupe but said it just wasn’t worth it. He mostly has stopped carrying it.

Even those pharmacies that aim to stock buprenorphine can run into problems. Limits set by wholesalers require pharmacies to order the drug in small, frequent batches. Though pharmacies can apply for exemptions to order more at a time, or to have a higher percentage of their total stock consist of controlled substances, doing so invites a higher level of scrutiny from the wholesaler and, in turn, the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Another issue is that doctors and pharmacists receive different education about how long buprenorphine should be prescribed before tapering a patient off it. Many medical providers might prescribe the drug for long-term treatment, based on recent SAMHSA guidelines, while pharmacists may view longer courses of treatment as posing the risk of long-term dependency.

“It’s not even that they’re on different pages,” said Ventricelli of the College of Pharmacy. “It’s that they’re reading completely different books.”

If a patient going through withdrawal can’t get buprenorphine quickly, the stakes are high. Silvana Mazzella, associate executive director at Prevention Point, said that when it’s not available, patients are more likely to turn back to heroin or fentanyl.

“We’re in a situation where if you are in withdrawal, you’re sick, you need to get well, you want help today, and if you can’t get it through medication-assisted treatment, unfortunately you will find it a block away, very quickly, and very cheaply,” she said.

Doctors with Prevention Point have found a pharmacy near the bupe bus that will reliably dispense buprenorphine to their Philadelphia patients. It’s a neighborhood branch of a local chain, called the Pharmacy of America.

The head pharmacist, Anthony Shirley, said he’s comfortable filling the scripts because he trusts that the doctors at Prevention Point will write prescriptions only for patients who need the medication. He has heard firsthand from patients who say buprenorphine saved their lives.

“That’s something you can’t really put a price tag on,” Shirley said. For him, the calculation is simple: His store is in an area where many people need buprenorphine. That means it’s his job to get it to them.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News. KHN is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Over 600 Arrested in Healthcare Fraud Sweep

By Pat Anson, Editor

Over 600 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical providers have been arrested in what the U.S. Justice Department is calling its largest healthcare fraud investigation.

Most of the charges involve false claims for opioid prescriptions or addiction treatment that resulted in $2 billion in fraudulent billings to Medicare, Medicaid and other health insurers. Many of the arrests occurred weeks or months ago, and were apparently lumped together by federal agencies to make the crackdown on healthcare fraud appear to be the "largest ever." 

“This is the most fraud, the most defendants, and the most doctors ever charged in a single operation -- and we have evidence that our ongoing work has stopped or prevented billions of dollars’ worth of fraud,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Federal officials also announced that they have excluded 2,700 individuals from participating in Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs, including 587 providers excluded for conduct related to opioid diversion and abuse. 

“Health care fraud is a betrayal of vulnerable patients, and often it is theft from the taxpayer,” said Sessions.  “In many cases, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists take advantage of people suffering from drug addiction in order to line their pockets. These are despicable crimes.”

A $106 million scheme uncovered in Florida alleged there was widespread fraudulent urine drug testing at a substance abuse treatment center. The owner, medical director and two employees at the sober living facility allegedly recruited patients and paid kickbacks to them for participating in bogus drug tests.

In California, an attorney at a compounding pharmacy allegedly paid kickbacks and offered incentives such as prostitutes and expensive meals to two podiatrists in exchange for bogus prescriptions written on pre-printed prescription pads. Once the fraudulent prescriptions were filled, about $250 million in false claims were submitted to federal, state and private insurers.

In Texas, a pharmacy chain owner, managing partner and lead pharmacist were accused of using fraudulent prescriptions to fill bulk orders for over one million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, which the pharmacy then sold to drug couriers for millions of dollars. 

“Healthcare fraud touches every corner of the United States and not only costs taxpayers money, but also can have deadly consequences,” said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.  “Through investigations across the country, we have seen medical professionals putting greed above their patients’ well-being and trusted doctors fanning the flames of the opioid crisis.”

Since becoming Attorney General, Sessions has shown a particular interest in opioid prescriptions -- once urging pain patients to “tough it out” and take aspirin instead.

Last August, Sessions ordered the formation of a new data analysis team, the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, to focus solely on opioid-related health care fraud.  Five months later, Sessions launched a Justice Department task force targeting manufacturers and distributors of opioid medication, as well as physicians and pharmacies engaged in the “unlawful” prescribing of opioids.

As PNN has reported, the data mining of opioid prescriptions -- without examining the full context of who the medications were written for or why – can be problematic. Last year the DEA raided the offices of Dr. Forest Tennant, a prominent California pain physician, because he had “very suspicious prescribing patterns.” Tennant only treated intractable pain patients, many from out-of-state, and often prescribed high doses of opioids to patients because of their chronically poor health -- important facts that were omitted or ignored by DEA investigators. Tennant has not been charged with a crime, but announced plans to retire after the DEA raid.

Sessions has also proposed a new rule that would allow the DEA to punish drug makers if their painkillers are diverted or abused. If approved, the agency could reduce the amount of opioids a company would be allowed to produce, even if the drug maker had no direct role in the diversion.

Most overdoses are not linked to opioid pain medication, but are more likely associated with illicit fentanyl, heroin, anti-anxiety drugs or antidepressants.