Here’s one thing Charlie Baker should do to address opiate addiction

As director of the SCOPE of Pain program at Boston University launched last year to address the rising problem of opiate addiction, Dan Alford is not anti-drug.

He refers to prescription opiate-based drugs like Oxycontin and Zohydro as a "tool," and his goal is to teach doctors how to use them safely. On the one hand, he sharply criticized the maker of the new opiate drug, Zohydro, earlier this year for not first formulating the drug to make it abuse-deterrent (the drugmaker, Zogenix, has since filed for approval of a reformulated version). On the other hand, he says that in recent years the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of restricting opiates, to the point where some patients who would benefit from their use are finding them too difficult to obtain.

SCOPE of Pain is planning an education program for doctors who prescribe opiates this Friday in Boston, where accidental drug overdoses increased by 39 percent between 2010 and 2012, according to the city's Public Health Commission. While Alford has held similar programs out-of-state several times on the past year, this one will have added significance. It comes just a week after governor-elect Charlie Baker said that one of his immediate priorities when he takes office will be to address the problem of opioid overdoses, a problem that now kills people at a faster rate than car accidents in Massachusetts.

"It's very exciting, but not all that surprising, that (Baker) is choosing to focus on this. It's in your face," said Alford, also an addiction specialist at Boston Medical Center.

Alford said he was struck by "how perturbed (Baker) was that his son was just prescribed Percocets," a common opiate, after breaking his arm, according to a Boston Globe article last week. SCOPE of Pain (which stands for Safe and Competent Opioid Prescribing Education) has invited representatives from both Baker's team and from new Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, also a supporter of efforts to curb addiction, to attend Friday's event. The program has already educated some 20,000 doctors nationwide in less than two years since the program began. The state requires doctors who prescribe opiates to attend three hours of training every two years in addiction, and has instituted a tracking system to identify potential abusers.