New rules should make methadone easier to get, but change is slow in many places

New rules should make methadone easier to get, but change is slow in many places toggle caption Karen Brown/New England Public Media It should be easier to get methadone today than it has been in decades. “They just built the rules in this one way that made it incredibly restrictive,” Potee said, “And they never went back to change it, despite decades of increasing addiction.” But this past spring, the federal agency that oversees substance abuse and mental health services — called SAMHSA — changed the methadone rules for the first time in decades. “Substance use treatment programs love rules,” said Brian Hurley, who heads the American Society for Addiction Medicine. “It takes time both for state regs to change and, frankly, for business operations and clinical practices to evolve.” He says the general culture of methadone clinics — also called Opioid Treatment Programs or OTPs — is mired in the way things have always been done. Sponsor Message “When you look at a whole system of 2000-plus treatment programs, it's like watching an aircraft carrier change course in the middle of the ocean,” said Mark Parrino, head of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, a trade group for methadone clinics.