RCTs may not be ethical for harm reduction: Doleac redux.

Jennifer L. Doleac and Anita Mukherjee are at it again. After last spring's publication of their working paper suggesting that providing naloxone, an overdose‐reversal drug, would just encourage more people to use fentanyl, they were roundly criticized by the public health research community (see ADAW, March 19). They said naloxone eliminated the "moral hazard" of opioid use. Both economists, they recently wrote a similar article published by the Brookings Institution, also suggesting that harm reduction in general, including syringe exchanges, promotes drug use and therefore contributes to overdoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]