It’s impossible, of course, to know for certain what would have happened if the Free Beacon hadn’t broken the story and caused the administration to recalibrate. But every indication is that, faced with a sudden PR mess and offered a small measure of plausible deniability, the administration took it, tweaking its own policy plans to fit.

There’s an irony here. Republican “crack pipe” attacks on the Biden administration, in keeping with most such attacks, sought to portray the White House as a fantasia for hard-left policy. But the administration’s subsequent dodge-and-roll highlights a different ongoing White House tic: For all its leftist proposals, Team Biden has sometimes been weirdly jumpy about attracting bad right-wing press. After former President Trump slashed the U.S. refugee cap to record lows, Biden hemmed and hawed for months before following through on his promise to raise it again—a delay reportedly attributable to the political optics involved.

A similar dynamic seems to be at play here. The Biden administration believes harm prevention for addicts is good public health policy. It just doesn’t seem prepared to weather a talking point or two to put it in place.