Officials in the former Soviet republic of Georgia are blaming a surge in drug use on diversion of the addiction-treatment drug Subutex, which has buprenorphine as its active ingredient, the International Herald Tribune reported June 12.

Drug use has risen an estimated 80 percent in Georgia since 2003, and local treatment officials blame smugglers for importing Subutex from Western Europe and selling it to locals. "It is visible that Subutex use has dramatically increased," says Khatuna Todadze, scientific director of the Research Institute on Addition in Tbilisi. "In the last two or three years it has become a really big problem."

Buprenorphine is less addictive than heroin or methadone, and is used to treat opiate addiction; the drug also is less stringently controlled under the UN's Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Unlike methadone, Subutex can be prescribed in doctors' offices, and has replaced methadone as the anti-opiate medication of choice in many countries. Consumption of the drug almost tripled worldwide between 2000 and 2004.

Georgia is not the only nation to report problems with buprenorphine abuse. "In some countries, such as Finland, buprenorphine has become the most important illicitly used substance for opiate addicts; in some illicit markets, it has almost totally replaced heroin," reported the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in 2005.

The drug is both cheaper than heroin and more available; black markets for the drug also exist in Great Britain, Germany, and New Zealand, anti-drug experts said. On the other hand, treatment officials credit buprenorphine with a 79-percent decline in overdose deaths in France, as well as a drop in drug-related crime.

"An upshot of so much Subutex abuse going on overseas is that it is going to be safer than heroin, because you know the purity and dose," noted researcher Wendy Kissin.