PORTLAND (AP) – A new medicine that helps drug addicts control their cravings is being offered to patients at Acadia Hospital’s drug treatment clinic in Bangor.

Addiction experts say buprenorphine is relatively safe and difficult to abuse, which means it can be prescribed by a patient’s local physician. That could allow for the expansion of drug treatment to rural sections of Maine that lack acccess to a methadone clinic.

“It’s a much safer medication,” said Scott Farnum, administrator of substance abuse services at Acadia Hospital. “It’s much harder to overdose on by itself. Methadone is a drug that is easy to overdose on. We’re planning to be utilizing it in a very comprehensive way in the next few months.”

Methadone, which curbs addicts’ symptoms of withdrawal from heroin, is only dispensed at government-regulated clinics. By contrast, buprenorphine can be obtained at pharmacies.

Treatment professionals caution that the new medicine is much more expensive than methadone and is less effective in treating people with long-term, severe addiction.

Still, buprenorphine offers an alternative that has huge potential, especially for adolescents who now have no in-state treatment options, says Mark Publicker, medical director at the Mercy Recovery Center in Westbrook.

“Most of us have a certain reluctance to start young people on methadone. It’s a long-term treatment process,” Publicker said after a presentation on the drug to health professionals, social workers and law enforcement last week.

A surge in abuse of the painkiller OxyContin and a resurgence in the popularity of heroin have fueled growth in the problem of opiate addiction in Maine. Addiction is especially problematic in rural areas where treatment, if available at all, often entails traveling several hours by car every day.

Treatment professionals say one of the major advantages of buprenorphine is that it could potentially be made available throughout the state.

“For people that live in rural areas, particularly the young people who haven’t used for very long, I think it’s wonderful,” said Kim Johnson, director of the state Office of Substance Abuse. “Getting into methadone treatment takes your whole life if you live far away from a program.”

So far, more than 20 doctors across Maine are eligible to prescribe the medication. Acadia Hospital plans to hold group training for doctors throughout eastern Maine this summer.

“Everybody has a waiting list,” Farnum said of the state’s methadone clinics. “There are so many people who are sick and only so many people who can treat them.”

AP-ES-04-12-04 0217EDT