This is only a utilitarian ethical argument. If people approach from a deontological perspective, the measurements may not matter.

Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question. The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.

> Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question.

Does it?

> The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.

Isn't that what this study was—they had a hypothesis which they wished to test: "We should do X." Then they did whatever they reported in their paper, and found that their hypothesis was supported by the evidence.

A policy prescription requires weighing of values, which a scientist should avoid at all costs. It's quite literally the point of science, to understand how the world works without injecting your personal biases about how the world should work.

The point of science is, ideas are tested by experiment. If you don't start your experiment with a hypothesis about the way the world works, then you're just p-hacking.

If the authors were striving for objectivity, they'd skip discussion of values and interests entirely and talk solely about what effect drug policies had on certain quantifiable metrics --- all in a factual and dispassionate way.

A scientific paper is a report on the state of reality and should not contain a case for any sort of action.

That's fine, but it should say that (and probably does; the journalism is probably the one changing the story).