You’ve seen the commercial. It airs in the nightly news half-hour, a time that seems to attract these shills for designer prescriptions that cure illnesses we didn’t even know existed until Big Pharma filled us in.

In this particular commercial, a handsome middle-aged guy in a hardhat and Carhart pokes a little self-deprecatory humor at a little-discussed side-effect of opioid painkillers — his opioid induced, well ... you know: “So I told my doctor. She said, ‘How long have you been holding this in?’”

Anyway, that’s not the point. The commercial’s dramatic tension — at least, for pharmacists and law enforcement officers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere — is watching and waiting to see if this cheerfully frank, take-charge construction site guy, barking instructions and toting his blueprints, will eventually pull his pain-free self into his pickup truck and drive away.

We’re left in suspense. The character approaches the vehicle but doesn’t get in or start it up before the 30-second spot ends.

Which leads us to a broader point.

Nobody taking an opioid should operate a vehicle. That’s a DUI violation. Yet every day, patients drive to and from their local pharmacy to pick up prescriptions of powerful painkillers that make them ineligible to drive, whether or not they realize or admit it.

Pennsylvania has the technical capability to keep some of these drivers off the road. Under the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, which began in January, all doctors, pharmacists and other drug dispensers must register with the state Health Department and transmit records of prescriptions for opioids and other addictive drugs.

According to the Health Department, the PDMP has two objectives:

- To increase the quality of patient care by giving prescribers and dispensers access to a patient’s controlled substance prescription medication history, which will alert medical professionals to potential dangers for purposes of making treatment determinations.

- To aid regulatory and law enforcement agencies in the detection and prevention of fraud, drug abuse and the criminal diversion of controlled substances.

The second objective mandates public safety — which includes prevention of drug-related DUIs.

It only makes sense and should be routine procedure for the state to suspend the driver’s licenses of people who are prescribed these medications.

It should be routine for doctors advising patients that they cannot drive while taking these powerful prescriptions. It should be routine for pharmacists to do the same.

For a state that’s able to track prescription drug use, it should be a simple matter to suspend a license — and reactivate it again — as patients go on and off prescription drugs.

Obviously this won’t stop all DUI cases, particularly those in which heroin or unprescribed opioids are involved. One such case occurred this week before District Judge Sue Haggerty in Saxonburg. Two-time suspected drugged driver Anthony M. Cousins, 24, of Franklin Township was denied unsecured bail after he waived his right to a hearing on drugged driving charges.

“I have concerns for yourself and the public,” Haggerty told Cousins after she set bail at $15,000.

The suspect faces charges for a traffic stop in December, and also for a head-on collision last month that seriously injured the other driver, whose foot reportedly might need to be amputated.

Many have said that there is no silver-bullet remedy for the opiate scourge. That’s true. The battle must be fought incrementally. Suspending the licenses of drivers on the prescription register would not have stopped Cousins, but it will stop others.

The General Assembly should strongly consider amending the law to set dosage thresholds and automatically suspend the driver’s license of any person who is prescribed opioid medications at or above the threshold dose, for the duration of the prescription.