(New York Times) – A drug called buprenorphine may be the best tool doctors have to fight the fentanyl crisis. Why hasn’t it been more widely adopted?

Many see illicit fentanyl, said to be about 50 times as powerful as heroin and 100 times as powerful as morphine, as the worst drug epidemic the country has ever seen. At the same time, experts have reached a consensus: Medication-for-addiction treatment, or M.A.T. — using medicine like buprenorphine or methadone to help patients recover from their opioid-use disorder rather than trying to get them to quit cold turkey — is the best course of treatment. Merely starting people on buprenorphine, research suggests, can cut their chances of dying from overdose by between 50 and 80 percent, compared with patients receiving talk therapy and other nondrug interventions.

Yet the drug remains drastically underprescribed. (Read More)