Roxane Laboratories, Inc. announced FDA approval of their generic version of Subutex in October, 2009. My local pharmacist told me that his distributor just made it available for him to order yesterday.
The generic form is much cheaper than Subutex, and the pharmacist told me that he thinks all pharmacies will carry it soon.
The bad news is that there isn’t a generic for Suboxone available. Many doctors won’t substitute one for the other because they believe that Suboxone is less subject to abuse.
Annual sales of Subutex are about $67.7 million.
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This is good news, but I wish they would hurry up and get a generic for Suboxone or lower the price. That reminds me, my son’s probation officer mentioned “a patch” today but I don’t know what she was talking about….is there some sort of patch you can wear that works as an opiate blocker? Have you ever heard of that?
The PO probably means a drug test patch.
Although there are extended release options for buprenorphine being studied/developed, I haven’t heard of them being available yet.
Let me know what it turns out to be!
Thanks, I’m a fan of your work! Tom