Editorial Comment 10/8: Graduate education

Readership attention is invited to the opioid use disorder education requirement proposal (The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics), below.  The follow-up question is whether such a proposal is sufficiently broad. The issue ought be less one of treatment of a particular substance use disorder, such as opioid use disorder, as it is both of safely prescribing controlled medications with a narrow therapeutic index or risk of substance use disorder development and managing identification, intervention and treatment.  Were the admonition directed toward all such medication classes – sedative-hypnotics, stimulants, arylcyclohexylamines (ketamine, phencyclidine), inhalants, opioids – as well as those agents not prescribed but similarly addictive (nicotine, alcohol, caffeine), it would seem both more protective and more logical.  This argument is cogently put by Dr. Paul Earley in his MedPage Today piece.  Dr. Earley, President of ASAM, writes from a position of both personal experience and professional commitment.

- Editor-in-Chief: William Haning, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM