Good intentions sometimes lead to disaster. When it comes to Suboxone, some say its maker’s intentions weren’t good to begin with.

Suboxone’s stated purpose is to help drug addicts kick powerful habits, and for many it does just that. But for others, Suboxone becomes a substitute addiction fraught with unique dangers of its own.

On Monday, Butler County detectives charged an Eau Claire couple with trying to smuggle Suboxone into the county prison — in mail disguised as legal correspondence.

Matthew N. Ford, 30, and his girlfriend, Jamie L. Uber, 32, both face felony drug charges. Uber is accused of sending Suboxone to Ford, a prison inmate, concealed in a letter disguised as legal correspondence.

What exactly is Suboxone?

The drug combines buprenorphine — itself an opioid capable of causing euphoria — with naloxone, the drug overdose antidote also known as Narcan.

Suboxone is dispensed sublingually — a thin, plasticlike strip is dissolved under the tongue. It releases a controlled dose of both its component ingredients, simultaneously suppressing the addict’s urge for opiates and calming a broad spectrum of severe withdrawal symptoms ranging from restlessness to nausea and diarrhea.

However, withdrawal kicks into overdrive if two other conditions exist:

- If the user has heroin or any other opiates in their system.

- If the user tries to melt or dissolve the Suboxone and inject it.

British manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser introduced Suboxone strips in 2010. Reckitt’s patent for Suboxone tablets expired in 2009. Its patent for the strips protects Reckitt through 2023.

The tablets and strips are essentially the same formula, according to an antitrust suit filed Sept. 23 against Reckitt in federal court in Philadelphia. The plaintiffs — 35 states and the District of Columbia — claim Reckitt Benckiser eliminated competition by subverting sales of Suboxone pills and promoting its film as a safer product.

And in the midst of an opiate epidemic and changing attitudes about addiction, government programs like ObamaCare and Medicaid were paying for the majority of addiction treatments like Suboxone. That means, among other things, that people who are struggling with addictions can get quantities of an alternative drug at little or no cost to themselves, which some are using to sustain addictions. It’s likely some sell their Suboxone to others.

Reckitt Benckiser’s subsidiary that makes and markets Suboxone, Indivior, generated $1.014 billion in sales in 2015.

At area retail pharmacies, a prescription of Suboxone film costs between $449 and $505.

Indivior no longer makes a tablet form of Suboxone, but generic versions of the tablet remain available. Retail prices currently range from $61.28 to $89.98 — about one-fourth the cost of the film.

Considering antics like the episode discovered Monday at the prison, it’s hard to justify paying four times as much for a product that’s neither four times as effective, nor four times as safe, especially when most of the bill is being picked up by the taxpayer.