As someone who has had a loved one go through addiction, and ultimately die from that addiction, I find the binary nature of a lot of this self-described "evidence based guide" dangerously black and white. Proclaiming that abstinence based programs "have not been found to be effective" is total nonsense. What the study found in GB was that psychological only based treatment is less effective at preventing death than replacement therapy, on average. For many, replacement therapy may very well be the best option. For other, abstinence programs may give them an opportunity to fully reclaim their life. How about we empower medical professionals with the ability to treat the disease with a number of weapons, rather than creating this false dichotomy, which is not represented in the data. This guide would potentially discourage someone, or a family member, from choosing a very viable option for treatment, by overstating results.
While I'm not a medical professional, the best example I can think of is with how we treat depression. For some people, active psychotherapy is the best treatment option. For others, a regime of anti-depressants is sufficient treatment. For others, a combination of both is the optimum treatment option. What we don't do, as scientists, is say, "Option 2 has a 30% better outcome, thus we only will treat depression with option 2." That's just absolute junk. What it means is that we will look at what cohorts tend to respond best to option 1, 2, and 3, and understand why, so we can choose a treatment option that makes sense for that individual, without having to try 1, 2, and 3. It doesn't mean that we just toss out the other options wholesale.
The 538 politics podcast does a, "Good use of polling" and "bad use of polling" intro during many of their podcasts. This article would clearly fall under the category of "bad use of polling". I hope to see better out of 538 in the future on these topics.