Many minority opioid addicts don't have access to a potentially life-saving treatment

Buprenorphine, a drug that curbs the craving for opioid drugs, has been instrumental in the fight against the addiction epidemic our country faces. Reducing the cravings a drug user feels can help people on the path to recovery and reduce the chances of a fatal overdose. But as it turns out, this treatment isn't being offered equally to everyone who needs it.

A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that an overwhelming majority of the patients who receive buprenorphine treatment are white. Between 2012 and 2015, the study showed, while the number of prescriptions written for buprenorphine surged, there was little to no change in the number of prescriptions for patients of racial minorities. This, worryingly, happened at the same time that deaths by opioid overdose were "rising faster" for black people than for white people, NPR reported.

The opioid epidemic has been framed "as largely a white epidemic," said Pooja Lagisetty, one of the study's authors, "but we know now that's not true." And yet white Americans are "almost 35 times as likely" to discuss buprenorphine as a treatment option as black Americans.

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The problem may be partly due to funding. Because very few physicians have the special training required to prescribe buprenorphine, some doctors have resorted to taking direct cash payments for the drug. Only 25 percent of buprenorphine treatments that the study examined were funded by Medicare or Medicaid — which means that low-income patients might have a tough time affording the potentially life-saving medicine.

Whatever the cause, specialists are calling for racial parity in the treatment for opioid addiction. This study "demands for us to be looking at equitable treatment for addiction for African Americans," said Michael Botticelli, director of the Grayken Center for Addiction. Learn more at NPR.