More patients should be prescribed buprenorphine to treat drug addiction rather than remain "parked" on methadone, the House of Commons home affairs select committee has said.

The government should understand the potential for more effective drug addiction treatments rather than ignoring the side effects of existing opioid substitute treatments, such as methadone, because they are available, familiar and cost-effective, the committee said this week.

And there should be a greater emphasis on burpenorphine as an alternative to methadone, which would lead to better outcomes for patients and society, it added.

The government should not ignore the side effects of treatments such as methadone because they are available, familiar and cost-effective, the select committee said	More on methadone MSP's ‘methadone millionaires' claim sparks backlash PSNC links methadone deaths with crackdown on       supervised consumption Methadone deaths rocket in England and Wales
	The committee made the recommendations in a report released on Monday in which it said drug policy was not working and needed an immediate full review. It urged the government to set up a royal commission to tackle drugs policy and report back on its progress by 2015.

Following a year-long inquiry, the committee highlighted that the proportion of addicts prescribed buprenorphine rose steadily after its introduction in 1999 but had remained at approximately 15 per cent for the past seven years.

"We make no comment on the relative merits of methadone and buprenorphine. It is for the individual prescriber to decide which drug is clinically indicated for each patient," it said.

Committee chair Keith Vaz MP added that it was "unacceptable that treatments that we know work, such as residential rehabilitation and buprenorphine", were not accessible to more addicts.

Pharmacist Martin Bennett of Wicker Pharmacy in Sheffield said the use of buprenorphine was nothing revolutionary and was prescribed to approximately a quarter of patients in addiction treatment in Sheffield already.

"It's got two benefits: you can't inject it and it's pretty difficult to overdose on. So it's a lot safer alternative as take-home medication," he told C+D.

"It would make sense that methadone is restricted to supervised [consumption] only," he added.

In September, PSNC head of NHS services Alastair Buxton suggested that the increase in methadone-related deaths could be a result of government policy to cut back on supervised consumption.