SUPPORT Act rules for medication-assisted treatment take final form

The Drug Enforcement Administration issued a final rule on June 9, 2026, setting out which practitioners can prescribe and dispense medications for opioid use disorder and under what conditions, taking effect July 9, 2026.

The rule formally writes into DEA regulations changes Congress already made through the 2022 omnibus spending law, which eliminated the DATA-waiver program [1]. For dispensing narcotic drugs for maintenance or detoxification treatment, a separate narcotic treatment program registration is now required only for schedule II drugs [1]. There's no federal cap anymore on how many patients one practitioner can treat this way [1]. All practitioners other than veterinarians who have applied for a new DEA registration or renewal since June 27, 2023, have had to complete a one-time training on opioid and substance use disorders — with an exemption for physicians who graduated from an accredited US medical school within five years of their first registration and completed at least eight hours of relevant training in school or residency [1].

On pharmacy-delivered medication: a pharmacy can send schedule III, IV, or V narcotics approved for this treatment to a practitioner's registered location for administration by injection or implant [1], and the window to administer it once it arrives has grown from 14 days to 45 [1]. Both the pharmacy and the practitioner still have to be authorized under state law and keep complete records of everything delivered, received, administered, or disposed of [1].

None of the underlying law is new — the SUPPORT Act passed in 2018, and the omnibus that scrapped the waiver system passed in December 2022 [1]. What changed is that DEA's own rules caught up: this final rule, effective July 9, 2026, adopts the applicable parts of a November 2020 interim final rule and implements the 2022 statutory changes [1]. The old waiver-era terms "qualifying practitioner" and "qualifying other practitioner" no longer exist in the Controlled Substances Act [1].

This is a final rule, not a proposal — it is the change, effective July 9, 2026 [1].

References

1. Implementation of the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention That Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act of 2018: Dispensing and Administering Controlled Substances for Medication-Assisted Treatment — Federal Register