Abstract
Bhai M, McMichael BJ, Mitchell DT. Impact of Fentanyl Test Strips as Harm Reduction for Drug-Related Mortality. Medical Care Research and Review. 2025;82(3):240–251. doi:10.1177/10775587251316919.
The Authors have requested the following clarifications to the published article for the purpose of providing additional transparency regarding the construction and coding of the fentanyl test strip (FTS) legalization variable used in the analysis, and to correct certain passages in the Introduction and Table and Figure notes.
In the Introduction section, the following two sentences:
“However, not all states permit their sale and use. As of 2024, 21 states and the District of Columbia have legalized FTS. The remaining states treat FTS as illegal drug paraphernalia (Davis et al., 2022).”
have been deleted. The surrounding text now reads directly from “. . .avoid consuming substances likely to lead to a fentanyl overdose” to “Once legalized, individuals can access FTS in a variety of ways.”
In the Methods section, the statement:
“We obtain information on whether states allowed FTS using the data source provided by Network for Public Health Law (2024). Figure 1 reports the geographic variation in these laws in 2022, and Table 1 contains the dates of when state legislatures passed statutes legalizing FTS.”
has been clarified to read:
“We obtain preliminary information on whether states allowed FTS using the data source provided by Network for Public Health Law (NPHL) (2024). We modify some of the dates provided by NPHL to ensure that the relevant date represents the policy shock of FTS legalization consistent with prior work encouraging individual researchers to verify the validity and applicability of any legal coding system (McMichael and Markowitz 2023). Details of our modifications can be found in Online Appendix A. Table 1 reports the dates of FTS legalization based on our modifications of the dates originally provided by NPHL, and Figure 1 reports the geographic variation in these laws in 2022.”
The source line under Table 1, which read:
“Source. Network for Public Health Law (2024).”
has been replaced with:
“Notes: All dates represent the implementation date of the relevant state’s law and are based on the authors’ modification of the dates originally provided by the Network for Public Health Law (2024).”
The note under Figure 1, which read:
“Note. FTS laws are reported as of 2022.”
has been revised to read:
“Notes: FTS laws based on the authors’ modification of NPHL’s implementation dates are reported as of 2022.”
The following reference has been added to the reference list to support the revised Empirical Strategy passage:
McMichael, B.J. & Markowitz, S. (2023). Toward a Uniform Classification of Nurse Practitioner Scope of Practice Laws. Medical Care Research and Review, 80(4): 444–454.
The Authors have added Online Appendix A, titled “The Coding of Fentanyl Test Strip Legalization,” which documents the legal coding framework and state-specific implementation decisions used in the analysis.
The data availability statement has been updated to:
All data used in this study are publicly available; NPHL data were modified as described in Appendix A.
The Journal Editor confirmed that these revisions provide additional methodological transparency regarding variable construction and legal coding decisions and do not alter the study results or conclusions.