Municipalities across the United States are taking new approaches to battling drugs and addiction.
Some are decriminalizing drugs and sending people to drug education courses instead of sentencing them to jail. Others help addicts find immediate rehab treatment instead of placing them in the criminal justice system.
Others are taking immediate physical approaches. Some police departments in the U.S. carry naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opiate/opioid, a class of drugs that includes heroin, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, Vicodin, oxycodone (OxyContin), and many others.
Other police departments have placed the drug naloxone free at pharmacies in their areas. They do not require people to have a prescription for the drug and are offering it for no cost. Guess what’s sponsoring the cost of this drug? Money the police have seized from drug dealers.
Also known by the brand name Narcan, naloxone has saved lives. One group alone, the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC), has distributed more than 38,000 overdose rescue kits that include naloxone. Even though the NCHRC has only been distributing these kits since 2013, the organization claims that these kits have saved more than 6,200 lives by March, 2017.
Naloxone isn’t just confined to doctors and police officers. The NCHRC gives its free overdose rescue kits to populations with a potentially high risk of overdosing, including current intravenous (IV) drug users, people working in the sex trade, and people with a history of incarceration and opiate use.
Such opiate overdose kits are also available for people undergoing medically assisted treatment (MAT). This makes sense, because naloxone is often combined with another drug, buprenorphine, to treat drug addiction. Also known as Suboxone, this combination is intended to reverse the effects of opiates/opiates and prevent withdrawals from such drugs.
Is naloxone a magic drug? Of course not, no drug is. But if using this drug can prevent overdoses, ease withdrawals, and wean people from other opiates, isn’t it worth exploring and making freely available?
