In September 2012, Reckitt Benckiser, calling it “a moral obligation,” announced that it would withdraw its Suboxone tablets from the market — in six months — because of “increasing concerns with pediatric exposure.” It effectively asked the F.D.A. to block generic tablets for the same reason, citing a company-financed study that indicated the film was far safer.

The F.D.A. disagreed and approved generic Suboxone tablets early this year.

Since then, Reckitt’s Suboxone journey has become bumpier. It is battling antitrust lawsuits by a dozen drug wholesalers and insurers who say the company “schemed” to extend its monopoly, overcharging them and, more broadly, the health care system.

In July, Reckitt Benckiser’s stock suffered its biggest one-day loss in two years after CVS Caremark announced that it would drop the film from its preferred drug list in favor of tablets. And there is a new brand on the shelves, too: Zubsolv, which its manufacturer, Orexo, says has “higher bioavailability, faster dissolve time and smaller tablet size with a new menthol taste.” Orexo’s United States medical director is Dr. Gitlow, the addiction medical society president.

In the third quarter of this year, Reckitt Benckiser’s net revenues from Suboxone declined 14 percent from the same period last year, which the company attributes to its discontinuation of the tablets. The company recently announced that it was “reviewing all options” for its pharmaceutical unit, which includes the possibility that it will sell, bringing its profitable foray into the drug business to a close.

Dr. Robert L. DuPont, the first director of the national drug abuse institute, said he marveled at the cutthroat business competition when “you couldn’t get pharma companies to even think about addiction treatment before this $1.5 billion drug got their attention.”

At a recent meeting of the addiction medicine society, “the buprenorphine sessions were all packed with doctors who wanted to get in on the gold rush,” he said. “It seems to me like they are repeating the experience of pain doctors in terms of reckless disregard of the nonmedical use of the drug.”

The system could well be at a turning point, with more drug options, lower prices and expanded insurance coverage under the new health care law and an “addiction equity” mandate. In addition, with a recent regulation change, for-profit addiction companies that run methadone clinics are expanding their buprenorphine programs, which have no patient limits, and some state governments are pressing federally funded health centers to increase nonprofit buprenorphine treatment.