Nalmefene (Selincro) is an opioid antagonist medication that was approved for the treatment of alcohol dependence by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2013 and recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the UK in 2014 (NICE, 2014). Its approval was controversial, because some doctors were skeptical about the quality of the evidence (see Braillon, 2014; Spence, 2014). Two recent articles are likely to revive this debate, and they raise broader issues about why the drug was licensed and recommended as a treatment for alcohol dependence.....