BALTIMORE — Buprenorphine, a medication to treat opioid addiction, has quietly stabilized Randall Lambert’s drug use over the past 15 years, even as chaos surrounded him. He cycled in and out of rehab facilities and jail, but the buprenorphine he took eased his heroin cravings and kept him from withdrawal. He is now sober, living in a rehab facility and nurturing relationships with his three children and his mother.
“I’ve had to rebuild so many times,” Mr. Lambert, who works at the rehab site supervising medications for other residents, said on a recent afternoon. But buprenorphine, he said, “got me to a place where I got clean.”
Now buprenorphine, once highly restricted, is available to far more doctors to prescribe for patients, the result of a significant change in federal drug policy that scrapped a special licensing requirement known as an “X waiver.” In December, Congress approved the change as part of a government spending package, dramatically expanding the pool of physicians and health workers who could prescribe the medication.
