The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) knew as early as December 2005 that some patients were crushing and injecting buprenorphine -- a drug designed to prevent just such abuse -- but didn't release the findings until January 2008, the Baltimore Sun reported Feb. 12.

On Jan. 28, SAMHSA posted a report on its website detailing "new" findings about the misuse of buprenorphine, sold commercially as Subutex and Suboxone, including illicit sales and a "small but persistent" problem of abuse. But Vermont officials had reported those problems to SAMHSA two years earlier, even as SAMHSA was in the middle of a campaign to promote buprenorphine use as an alternative to treating opiate addicts with methadone.

Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) chastised SAMHSA for the delay in reporting problems with buprenorphine to Congress and the Food and Drug Administration, calling for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to "look into concerns about buprenorphine and investigate the failure of the FDA and SAMHSA to collaborate and to share and release reports in a timely manner."

Kay Springer, a SAMHSA spokesperson, said that the agency did "take a while" to release the report, which she said was originally supposed to be used internally and not for public release.

SAMHSA commissioned a study of possible buprenorphine abuse a year after receiving the Vermont reports; the study was delivered on Nov. 30, 2006. During the same year, SAMHSA told Congress that use of the drug was progressing with "minimal adverse public health consequences," and lawmakers agreed in December 2006 to expand use of the drug.