designed<\/a> to help get inmates off drugs such as heroin, fentanyl, and prescription painkillers.<\/p>\n“Once it comes out that, ‘hey, I can get Suboxone because of this, even though I had never been on drugs before,’ then it filters out to the rest of the inmate population, and one by one they keep saying, I can get this drug.”<\/p>\n
Any inmate can request it, and lots have. Five years ago, fewer than 500 state inmates had a prescription. That number is now just under 6,000, with 3,000 more referred to the program and awaiting approval.<\/p>\n
The state is also paying more for it; five years ago it cost the Department of Corrections less than $25,000 a month, and it’s now costing more than $233,000 a month.<\/p>\n
“I don’t understand why we create a policy that puts them back on drugs. Even if you say Suboxone is, it doesn’t hurt nobody. Why? Why are we doing it?”<\/p>\n
Former State Corrections Secretary John Wetzel says there’s a 35% reduction in recidivism of people who were prescribed Suboxone.<\/p>\n
“There’s no question as to its effectiveness or efficacy when administered appropriately.”<\/p>\n
The Department of Corrections says it doesn’t decide who gets Suboxone, and such decisions are “only made by licensed medical professionals based on clinical evaluation.”<\/p>\n
Courts have ruled that denying Suboxone to inmates with opioid use disorder violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.<\/p>\n
“If someone has this illness, whether people like to call it addiction and mental illness or not, the court doesn’t care about your opinion,” said Wetzel. “If you have a drug that is readily available and someone has a condition that requires that drug, you give them the drug.”<\/p>\n
Suboxone can create a mild high, Ohler says, which is why so many want it.<\/p>\n
The drug is also being used to treat inmates in county jails.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(WHTM) \u2013 Pennsylvania prisons are increasingly prescribing Suboxone to inmates for their opioid addiction. The state has embraced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[102934,102935,30344,28,30,29,102936,82006],"class_list":["post-239363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-corrections-officers","tag-john-wetzel","tag-opioid-addiction","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-state-corrections","tag-suboxone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}