"In a bid for New Hampshire voters presidential candidates have called for compassion for heroin and painkiller addicts. Off the campaign trail theres intense debate over using opioid meds to kick opioid addiction. Scott Jernigan became addicted to painkillers after his failed back surgery. His doctor had prescribed a months worth of OxyContin the signature drug of the nationwide painkiller addiction epidemic and Jernigan followed it to the letter. Soon the welloff businessman husband and father of two from Florida was an addict buying pills on the street. In the last year of addiction Jernigan snorted away a house a boat and almost his life. Even his dealer told him he needed to cut back. A drug dealer telling you Hey man you really ought to slow down Jernigan  told BuzzFeed News. Can you imagine Hes just one of an estimated . million http people across the United States who are addicted to opioid painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone sold as OxyContin and Vicodin respectively. Every day  Americans die http from a painkiller overdose. The central irony of the painkiller pandemic as Sen. Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire called it in a January Senate hearing http is that its easy to prescribe painkillers but hard to prescribe medication to treat an addiction. These medications notably the drug buprenorphine are not panaceas but studies have shown that theyre the best choice httpsstore.samhsa.govshincontentSMASMA.pdf to help addicts get off painkillers. Trouble is theyre also opioids themselves and can result in dependency and highs all on their own turning into street drugs httpnationalpainreport.comsuboxonenewdrugepidemic.html in the last decade. Partly as a result relatively few doctors are allowed to prescribe them and these docs are limited in how many recovering addicts they can treat. In Shaheens Feb.  primary state of New Hampshire the drug epidemic ranks as the No.  concern of voters in polls httpabcnews.go.comPoliticshampshiresdrugepidemictakescenterstagedemocraticdebatestoryid. There presidential candidates such as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey are calling for treating addiction as a disease not a moral failing httpabcnews.go.comPoliticswireStorylatesttrumprejoiningrivalsfinalnhdebate. And a move is afoot in Congress and the White House to ease restrictions on medications meant to fight addiction. Last Tuesday the Obama administration announced that it is seeking . billion to fight the opioid epidemic including a  million http boost to medicationassisted treatment for opioid addiction. And on Thursday the FDA unveiled a new strategy http for curbing rampant painkiller prescriptions which includes making medication treatments more widely available. I think the situation is sinking in Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon told BuzzFeed News. It is so out of control and there is a real opportunity for action in this Congress. Pharma meanwhile is ramping up its marketing of these medications pitching them as pain relievers themselves and releasing new forms such as a patch and a mintflavored tablet. One new option awaiting FDA approval an implant Jernigan credits with saving his life. Two years into Jernigans addiction at a stage when he was getting high only to stave off withdrawal listless and miserable another addict told him about a study a drug company was sponsoring at a nearby rehab center testing buprenorphine pills as a quitting aid. I called on a Thursday and they said they had no openings. I was crushed Jernigan said. Then they called back and said they had a sudden opening on Monday. I was very lucky. Indeed most addicts dont get that opportunity. At the Senate hearing http politicians from both parties voiced outrage over the statistic that only about  in  prescription painkiller addicts who want help can gain entrance into a recovery program that offers them both medication and counseling the best proven http way to recover from addiction. Many instead end up in dodgy rehab centers http that quickly detox addicts but dont offer them medication or counseling to keep them from relapsing. Im incredibly discouraged that we have more folks signing up for addiction treatment in Vermont now than we did when we started Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin testified http decrying the FDAs recent approval of oxycodone for children http We simply pass out painkillers like candy in America. To counteract addictions to prescription painkillers as well as heroin their chemical cousin Shumlin called for allowing nurses and physician assistants to prescribe buprenorphine something they can readily do now for painkillers. The idea was seconded http by senators from both parties. Since its approval in  buprenorphine has become a leading medication for treating opioid addiction. Although its a chemical cousin to opioid painkillers and heroin it provides less euphoria while saturating the brains opiate receptors making it nearly impossible to overdose or get high off of other opiate drugs like heroin. Most often it is sold as the drug Suboxone a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone which blocks the high from other opioids to prevent misuse in the form of strips that dissolve under the tongue although it is also sold in generic tablets. Essentially buprenorphine serves as a bridge to stave off the pain of withdrawal. You cant quit when you are feeling sick said Jernigan who started taking buprenorphine two years five months and a couple of days ago. He counts each day. Despite its effectiveness buprenorphine has been slow to catch on Its now prescribed about  million times a year typically in a monthlong dose a fraction of the  millionplus prescriptions for opioid painkillers. Partly thats because the government says that doctors cant prescribe it to more than  patients and most are limited to  or fewer. Even those doctors must take a short course to receive a waiver allowing them to prescribe the drug. Along with many doctors staying away from treating addicts the restrictions explain why only about  of the nations  doctors https prescribe the drug. In contrast there are about  U.S. prescribers http of extendeddosage opioid painkillers with unlimited prescribing privileges according to FDA. Surveys suggest that most of the doctors allowed to prescribe buprenorphine are not psychiatrists or addiction specialists epidemiologist Hannah Knudsen of the University of Kentucky in Lexington told BuzzFeed News. Their numbers have grown by about  in the last two years however partly reflecting southern states catching up to northern states in the number of accredited doctors. Where Doctors Prescribe Buprenorphine    Traditional detoxification where a patient is nursed through withdrawal and then returns home after about a month is a lousy way to treat addiction. It leads to relapse about  of the time. But buprenorphine is not a miracle alternative. Of the  addicts including Jernigan who were in the study testing the drug with counseling only  successfully quit including him. Across many trials buprenorphine leads to success in only onequarter to onethird of addicts according to http FDA survey data presented last month at an advisory committee meeting. Plus people do get high https on buprenorphine. If you make a drug more available it will be abused R. Terry Furst of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice told BuzzFeed News. His own interviews http with addicts and dealers suggest that opioid addicts sometimes use buprenorphine as a way to tide their cravings over until they next binge on heroin. Furst is also worried about recreational drug users who binge on the weekends  he calls them weekend warriors  who are finding their way to bupes. So hes not happy about the new moves in Washington to make prescribing buprenorphine easier. Raising the limits on the number of patients who can receive prescriptions or letting nurses prescribe buprenorphine under a doctors supervision is insane he said. Not everyone agrees. Addiction specialists such as Gail DOnofrio of Yale say that restricting buprenorphine prescriptions could hinder fullfledged recovery centers that offer counseling as well as medication. People need help with a job with mental issues with their family with putting their life together again DOnofrio told BuzzFeed News. Those kind of services cost money and the doctor becomes a bottleneck on the number of addicts that quality recovery centers can treat. Last month an FDA scientific advisory committee voted  to  in favor of a new approach a sixmonth implant of buprenorphine for addicts who are stable in their recovery from prescription painkiller addiction. Called Probuphine and developed by Titan Pharmaceuticals of California and Braeburn Pharmaceuticals of New Jersey the implant buried in a patients upper arm will in theory deliver a sixmonth supply of the medication while limiting illicit sales.  It sounds like a reasonably good option for someone in recovery to get it and forget it so they dont have to remember their medication addiction treatment expert Marc LaRochelle of Boston Medical Center told BuzzFeed News. I wouldnt give it to everyone but it would be nice to have another option. The FDA had nixed the implant in  overriding http an earlier science panel vote for its approval out of concern about a lack of safety data. FDA scientists again voiced concerns again at last months hearing which largely debated a Braeburnfunded study finding the implant performed at least as well as the other approved forms of the drug in  addicts. Jernigan was one of the study volunteers and he testified in favor of the implant at the Jan.  hearing his travel paid for by Braeburn. What the implant does is take away the reminder of how I screwed up every day and the worry about missing my medication he said. I dont have to go to the pharmacy to get the look Oh you are one of those. At the same hearing Braeburn representatives suggested that only  of the implant patients relapsed into illicit drug use during the trial compared with  of daily pill users. About  of people now prescribed low doses of buprenorphine to treat addiction after about six months of recovery  or about  addicts  could benefit from implants the company says. But the implant users ended up taking more medication overall than the daily drug users pharmacologist Tracy Rupp of the National Center for Health Research testified in a critique. Thats likely because it might take up to four weeks for the implants medication to kick in she said and the patients required extra medication until that happened. Doctors mishandling the transition from daily doses of buprenorphine to the implant might leave recovering addicts suddenly vulnerable to relapse. Furst also worries about addicts ripping the implants out of their arms to get high. Never underestimate the ingenuity of someone addicted he said. But Braeburn representatives said at the hearing that little of the drug could be recovered from the implant that way. For Jernigan an implants potential to remove him from the stigma of picking up his prescription counts as much as anything in its favor. Everyones recovery is different but this stuff saved my life Jernigan said to BuzzFeed News. Not having to worry about forgetting it and reminding my wife of the problems I caused all the time would be wonderful. I feel sorry for all the people who didnt make it he added. Ive worked hard harder than I worked when I was young the last few years. But it is also fun clearing my mind finally. I can feel myself getting better. CORRECTION  February   at  a.m.  This story has been corrected to note that naloxone is an ingredient of the drug Suboxone not naltrexone a different medication sometimes used to treat opioid dependence."