DRUG dealers are making a killing behind prison walls pushing a product that doesn't even get users "high". A stash of Suboxone found in an accused smuggler's underpants during his visit to a southeast Queensland jail last week was worth as much as $100,000 inside, prison authorities revealed.
The lemon-flavoured opiate strips, used to treat heroin withdrawal, are being sold at a 43,000 per cent profit margin for peddlers who pay $2 in a pharmacy.
But Australian Medical Association state president Christian Rowan said addicts were paying for "a placebo effect".
Suboxone satisfied addicts' cravings, but heroin-like highs were denied by a built-in chemical "cap" on euphoria called naloxone, he said.
This has done nothing to cool the roaring trade in prison where strips can be easily concealed.
The $100,000 haul seized from the visitor to Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre - made up of 106 Suboxone strips and eight tablets of its chemical cousin Subutex - was only revealed when he was ordered to strip.
A former Arthur Gorrie inmate, who asked not to be named, said he knew of prisoners paying up to $300 a milligram for Subutex or Suboxone - the equivalent of $2000 a tablet.
"It's all done through phone betting accounts," he said.
"Junkies can get their spouse or their mate to put money in an account on the outside and they get the drugs delivered to them on the inside.
"Their whole day revolves around getting out and getting fixed up."
He said even empty syringes would fetch $50-100 each, before being shared by 50 or more inmates.
Dr Rowan, an addiction expert, said people who crushed and injected Suboxone were "not going to get the euphoric effect that they would have if they'd done the same with (Subutex)".
"People can (get high) but it's a question of whether they are getting the physical rush from the buprenorphine or they getting what a lot of people do from an addiction perspective - the emotions of actually injecting itself," he said. Some people end up injecting water and still get a rush just by the fact they're actually injecting something. It's the same principle with the Suboxone," he said.
The AMA has called for Queensland prisons to come into line with those interstate but bringing in a syringe program to cut illegal drug use and the risk of spreading viruses such as hepatitis C.
