Research on the Effects of Legal Health Interventions to Prevent Overdose: Too Often Too Little and Too Late

More than two decades ago, providers of health and harm-reduction services to people who inject opioids began equipping them with overdose-prevention information, skills-and vials of naloxone. Because naloxone is a prescription drug, state laws created uncertainties about the circumstances under which lay persons could be provided with naloxone to administer in case ofan overdose.1 Harm reductionists found ways to proceed without law reform,2 but removing legal barriers became increasingly important to diffusing and scaling these programs. Alas, we can't be confident that those studies will follow, and in this respect the article and the legal reform of naloxone access stand as a good example of the failure of our health research establishment to devote sufficient attention and resources to the timely evaluation of law as a factor in public health and a mechanism for scaling successful interventions. The prediction about prescription drug-monitoring programs is particularly striking in the context of a more thorough evaluation of health policies, because, studied in isolation, prescription drug-monitoring programs' negative impact on prescribing has been seen as a public health success.