Responding to opioid use disorder as a US public health crisis requires all clinicians to recognize addiction as a treatable disease.

Before a deadly heroin overdose at 27, Jean-Michel Basquiat finished an electrically vibrant skull, prompting questions today about arts donations generated by opioid profits.

Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.

Opioid use research has focused mainly on treatment and overdose responses. Clinically and ethically, these priorities should change.

Six recommendations focus on specific actions to help reverse the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Both physicians and pharmacists have responsibilities to ensure that opioids are prescribed and dispensed for legitimate medical purposes and to meet legal requirements.

Mandating processes that are not evidence based generates distress among patients and clinicians, so physician advocacy in national, state, and local policymaking is key.

Pain is the most common reason patients seek health care. The AMA Pain Care Task Force suggests how clinicians can offer good pain care and become savvy about situating themselves in the health care system to do so.

Pharma has long marketed opioids in ways that contribute to opioid use disorder and deaths by overdose. Regulatory mistakes in approving and labeling new analgesics by the FDA didn’t make us safer.

Social work perspectives on whether prescribers should authorize opioid refills emphasize the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to patient self-determination.