No Narcan for You! –
Apr 27, 2020 – Prior to the pandemic reaching US soil, opioid deaths have been on a slow decline, with the rate of deaths decreasing by 5% from 2017 to 2018.
Many experts have attributed this drop to the emphasis placed on naloxone access on both the local and state level.
Attitudes towards naloxone were still unfriendly in some places, with one Indiana county stating in February this year that using naloxone to reverse a drug overdose could warrant a police investigation. However, other states, like Pennsylvania, had begun supplying naloxone to area airports.
“Usually when someone overdoses on opioids, they cease to breathe,” Dr. Brett Wolfson-Stofko, researcher at New York University’s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, told Business Insider. “By administering naloxone it reverses that effect that the person can then breathe again.”
