Commentary: Why are we denying people with opioid addiction the most effective treatment?
When you receive a scary diagnosis — for cancer, heart disease or other serious illness — one of your first calls is probably to a doctor who can offer the full range of evidence-based care. But if your diagnosis were for opioid addiction and you came to see me, an addiction specialist, federal regulations written half a century ago would bar me from prescribing the most effective treatment: methadone.
The U.S. lost more than 100,000 people to overdoses in 2021 in a crisis now dominated by fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. That’s more than twice the number of
