So do we need Lie detectors in Suboxone clinics?

Where will this blame game end ?

Are we doctors easy targets to  beat up?

“I caught on to the whole Suboxone thing,” said Kyle Berry, a recovering addict from Grove City who used to obtain prescriptions for the drug.

Suboxone also is a popular street drug, one that state reports on drug-abuse trends say is “highly available for illicit use.” Berry saw that a prescription could be a means to other ends.

Drug dealers happily front the money for so-called “cash-n-carry” clinic visits in exchange for a share of the Suboxone, he said. Or, addicts sell it themselves, typically $15 to $20 for one of the “film strips” or pills.

Listen to the latest Buckeye Forum politics podcast


Berry said he wasn’t cut off when he failed the urine tests that prescribers are supposed to use to check for the presence of buprenorphine and other drugs. No one called him in for a pill count, and he wasn’t questioned about the proof-of-counseling documents that he forged multiple times.

“The doctors poorly regulate it,” he said. “And if I bring somebody else in, that’s 25 bucks off.”


Used properly as part of a comprehensive recovery program, Suboxone can help drug users get off of heroin or opioid painkillers without the excruciating effects of withdrawal. Those who sell or buy it on the street, however, might take it only sporadically, to supplement or substitute for heroin and stave off being “dope sick.”