Policy forum: Ethical imperatives to overcome stigma against people with substance use disorders

Abstract

Responding to the public health crisis in the United States resulting from untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) requires expanding delivery of effective treatments, including medications, and eliminating stigma against people with OUD and people seeking OUD treatment. Stigma discourages people with substance use disorders from seeking care and compromises the care they receive when they do seek it. Stigma against both medication treatments for OUD and harm-reduction approaches like syringe services programs has created additional barriers to these strategies' acceptance and use. It is ethically incumbent upon everyone in medicine and health care to recognize addiction not as a moral failing but as a treatable disease.