As five sheriffs work to establish a pilot program to expand medication-assisted treatment for inmates addicted to opiates, the Barnstable County sheriff’s office has brought new voices to the discussion of the program’s efficacy — those of inmates themselves.
The opioid addiction treatment law signed by Gov. Charlie Baker last week calls for correctional facilities in Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, Norfolk and Franklin counties to run a three-year medication-assisted treatment (MAT) pilot program beginning September 2019. Some Bay State sheriffs already offer one type of MAT, but the pilot will make more inmates eligible and will make more medications available for treatment.
Last Friday, the Barnstable County sheriff’s office released a YouTube video in which clinician Tom Hostetter talks with six current inmates and one recently-released offender about their experiences with Suboxone — the brand name for buprenorphine — and their thoughts on Suboxone being available within jails.
“I think it’s a terrible, it’s a horrible idea to introduce that into a facility,” one inmate said.
Another inmate, identified only as Peter, said he was in three correctional facilities before Barnstable County and said Suboxone, which is an opioid that can be abused like other drugs, was one of the most readily available drugs in the facilities.
“It was chaos — fights, gambling, people calling home to their families to try to get money so they could give it to another inmate to get Suboxones,” Peter said. “An eight-milligram Suboxone strip can be cut into sixteenths and those sixteenths of a Suboxone go for $20 a piece.”
Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings said the video and the short press release that accompanied it should not be taken as a sign that he or his office is opposed to the pilot program or MAT in general.