Two great tastes: Dilaudid and Subutex

A pair of interesting stories popped up recently on the opiate / painkiller front. First, news of how one unlucky Canadian town is being ravaged - ravaged! - by dilaudid abuse:

Dilaudid - a powerful, painkilling opiate - continues to ravage the streets of Prince Albert.

Though local health workers are taking some measures to stop users from destroying their lives by abusing the prescription drug, current tactics fall short of getting dilaudid off the streets and out of the addicts' arms.

"We still have a dilaudid problem," said Cheryl Lucas, a methadone case co-ordinator who works with addicts hooked on the drug.

It's just so refreshing to see a city buck the trendiness of Oxycontin, ignore the rock star fashion of heroin, and go for something old school like dilaudid ("two to eight times the painkilling effects of morphine"!). Color me impressed - but not as much as I am with some enterprising British prisoners, who have stumbled onto their own interesting alternative:

The use of a heroin substitute as a recreational drug is spreading across Britain's prison system 'like wildfire', according to new research. In some prisons as many as 70 per cent of inmates regularly take Subutex illegally, the research found, and many former offenders are returning to civilian life with a taste for the drug.

Subutex, like methadone, is prescribed to heroin users to help wean them off addiction. Available in pill form, it is less addictive and less likely to trigger fatal overdoses than heroin or methadone because it does not suppress breathing as much. It is more expensive than methadone and not prescribed as extensively.... The pills - known as 'subbies' - are popular with prisoners because they are small and easier to conceal than heroin or crack. The drug, the brand name for the opioid buprenorphine, is also harder to detect in tests

Way to zoom in on the more expensive, more easily concealable heroin alternative, British prisoners! If only you'd applied such creative thinking before getting busted, you might never have gotten caught.