National Opioid Epidemic is Cause to Examine the Legal Profession’s Own Problems with Addiction

As the United States wrestles with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called the worst drug addiction epidemic in U.S. history,¹ it is imperative that healthcare attorneys understand both the dimensions of the larger societal problem with opioids and the unique vulnerability that their own profession has to problematic substance use. With an important role to play in the creation, enforcement and interpretation of the myriad laws implicated in the opioid epidemic — now and in the future — attorneys’, and particularly healthcare attorneys’, credibility in this realm rests upon an earnest acknowledgment that many in the legal profession also face the same challenges of addiction currently facing the country.