Six Good Reasons to Repeal Kentucky’s Buprenorphine Regulation
Buprenorphine is a safe, effective, and life-saving medication for the treatment of people with opioid use disorder. However, due to buprenorphine access barriers, such as Kentucky’s buprenorphine regulation (201 KAR 9:270), buprenorphine is accessed by only approximately one out of five people who need treatment with this medication. 201 KAR 9:270 limits access to life-saving treatment with buprenorphine, worsens the societal impact of the opioid crisis, perpetuates stigma, and harms the people it was intended to help. Considering current scientific evidence, there is no plausible reason a separate buprenorphine-specific regulation, like 201 KAR 9:270, should continue to exist in Kentucky, especially considering our federal government has eliminated more restrictive national buprenorphine-specific regulations.
Recently, I was invited to testify in Kentucky’s capital on behalf of my Kentucky Society of Addiction Medicine colleagues regarding KY’s outdated buprenorphine regulation. My televised address to the Kentucky General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Health Services on October 23, 2024 focused on six good reasons 201 KAR 9:270 needs to be repealed.
My 10 minute address begins at the 39 minute mark of the video. Here’s the link: https://ket.org/legislature/archives/2024/interim/interim-joint-committee-on-health-services-agtk85
Six reasons for repeal of Kentucky’s buprenorphine regulation:
- A Kentucky crisis.
- Caused by a disease.
- With effective treatment.
- But with barriers to treatment.
- After repeal, it will still be regulated.
- On average, six Kentuckians die each day of overdose. Each death is preventable.
Here’s what my colleagues and I authored for the legislators to read. Please click on the link below to read it for yourself.
In truth, working together we can dramatically lower the opioid overdose rate in Kentucky and save thousands of lives each year. But a major barrier standing in our way is Kentucky’s outdated regulation (201 KAR 9:270) that restricts how physicians prescribe buprenorphine to treat patients with the disease of opioid use disorder.
I urge you to learn more about how experts, advocates, and concerned citizens are working to remove this harmful barrier to lifesaving care, by clicking on the links provided below:
Email us: Admin@kysam.org
And…
So, if you’ve read this far, first of all, THANK YOU! And secondly, you’ll probably be interested in what the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure had to say following my testimony. The board’s “prepared statement” is only about 4 1/2 minutes, but there’s a lot to unpack here…
Link to video: https://ket.org/legislature/archives/2024/interim/interim-joint-committee-on-health-services-c5yhc3
These two presentations before the Interim Joint Committee on Health Services represent two distinctly different approaches to a problem — one by caregivers, the other by regulators. Decide for yourself which approach is most vital in this moment of crisis.
Reading a prepared statement, President Thornbury said, “The board must make decisions based on the realities of the Commonwealth, not idealized scenarios.”
Well, the reality is that our young people are dying.
Kentucky’s buprenorphine regulation is outdated, harmful, and unsalvageable. It’s not necessary. And it forces physicians to practice beneath the standard of care. This regulation needs to be repealed, not processed, analyzed, and amended over a period of years. People who could be saved are dying now because of this regulation.
And, by the way, choosing life over death happens to be an “idealized scenario” I’m OK with.
Repealing 201 KAR 9:270 is choosing life.
Let’s make that the reality of our Commonwealth.
In summary…
Kentucky is mired in the throes of a deadly public health emergency, an opioid overdose crisis that has taken the lives of over 26,000 of our neighbors, friends, family members, and loved ones since the year 2000. Buprenorphine, a DEA schedule III controlled medication, has emerged as an essential standard of care for the treatment of opioid use disorder. However since 2015, Kentucky physicians’ efforts to effectively care for patients with addiction have been hampered by a regulation, 201 KAR 9:270, that impedes access to life-saving treatment for Kentuckians most at risk of dying from an overdose. 201 KAR 9:270 forces physicians to practice below the standard of care. This is harmful to the citizens of Kentucky and worsens our state’s opioid crisis. As scholars of addiction treatment policy have explained, no evidence supports the requirements in 201 KAR 9:270, which by preventing access to buprenorphine, allows preventable deaths to occur. Kentuckians are needlessly dying because of this regulation.
Kentucky must repeal 201 KAR 9:270
Confluential Truth 