Short communication French general practitioners’ prescribing high-dosage buprenorphine maintenance treatment: Is the existing training (good) enough? Isabelle Feroni a , Patrick Peretti-Watel a, * , Alain Masut b , Christine Coudert b , Alain Paraponaris a , Yolande Obadia a a Institut National de la Recherche Me ´dicale, U 379, 23 Rue Stanislas Torrents, 13006 Marseilles, France b Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Maladie des Bouches du Rho ˆne, 56 Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13009, Marseilles, France Abstract In France, since 1996, any general practitioner (GP) can prescribe high-dosage buprenorphine maintenance treatment (BMT) for opioid-dependent patients. The health authorities initially provided mandatory specific training, but since 1998, such training is only delivered by specialized networks and the pharmaceutical industry. Among a random sample of GPs from southeastern France (N = 345), we found that many untrained GPs, as well as a significant minority of trained GPs, were likely to prescribe an ineffective dosage of buprenorphine or a potentially dangerous treatment (BMT + a short half-life benzodiazepine). These results highlight the necessity to edit clear guidelines, especially concerning situations of polyaddiction and psychiatric comorbidity, and to extend and improve BMT training in France with a renewed involvement of health authorities for quality control of such training. They even suggest that GPs’ participation to specialized training sessions should become a mandatory prerequisite for prescribing BMT. D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Buprenorphine; Maintenance treatment; Opioid addiction; General practitioners; France 1. Introduction France was the first country to promote extensive high-dosage buprenorphine maintenance treatment (BMT, brand name Subutex) for opioid-dependent patients. As a partial agonist of 0306-4603/$ – see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2004.04.019 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +33-4-96-10-28-61; fax: +33-4-96-10-28-99. E-mail address: peretti@marseille.inserm.fr (P. Peretti-Watel). Addictive Behaviors 30 (2005) 187 – 191