Reduce the stigma to help people with substance use disorder

As the Biden administration’s former acting director of the National Drug Control Office, I appreciated the article pointing to ways health-care providers can better care for patients they label “difficult” (“When doctors dislike patients, quality of care might go down,” Health, July 5). With record rates of overdose death in the United States, more than 100,000 deaths in 2021 alone, hospitals and emergency departments provide a critically important intervention point for people at risk of overdosing. However, stigma and a lack of addiction training for physicians can stand in the way of proper care for people with substance use disorder.

Read more here.