- Narcan “Should Be In Every Emergency Box In Every School In America Because It Can Save Lives.” That’s U.S. Representative Buddy Carter, a Republican who previously worked as a pharmacist, describing on Fox News a key strategy to combat the opioid overdose crisis in America—which, according to a recent report from The Washington Post, is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-49. Carter told Fox News: “I keep Narcan in my backpack, I take it everywhere I go. Thankfully I haven’t had to use it and I hope I don’t—we ought to have Narcan available.”
- “New York’s First Narcan Vending Machine Is Working.” Writing for New York Magazine, Wilfred Chan details access to Narcan in a local vending machine saved a life:
“One afternoon in the middle of June, Elan Quashie had just finished restocking the vending machine outside of the Brownsville nonprofit where he works when a co-worker told him a man was slumped over next to it. Quashie suspected that the man was overdosing on fentanyl … After calling for an ambulance …. Quashie punched some buttons on the vending machine to get a pack of Narcan nasal spray. He pushed one dose into the man’s nose, and then, when that didn’t seem to revive him, another. The unconscious man finally stirred awake …. New York’s first naloxone vending machine had only been installed on the sidewalk days earlier, and it had probably saved his life.”
As Elan Quashie told New York Magazine, though, easy access to Narcan via a vending machine provides opportunities for anyone in the vicinity of a person overdosing to help save a life: “Even if I wasn’t there, anyone could have used the machine and done that in real time.”
- “Camden County To Equip Bus Drivers With Narcan, After Installing Kits In Most Schools.” Writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Melanie Burney details Camden County, New Jersey’s new pilot program that provides Narcan to school bus drivers who can administer the life-saving medicine to students. The county has already installed Narcan emergency boxes in “nearly every public, private, and parochial school in the county… [as well as to many] churches, boarding houses, apartment complexes, shelters, food pantries, courtrooms, and social service facilities” around the county.
- “Amid The Nation’s Deadly Opioid Epidemic, Summit County Stocks Life-Saving Antidote In Public.” For Summit Daily News, Ryan Spencer reports on a new overdose prevention program in the Colorado mountain county that has “more than 300 public, indoor locations” scattered throughout the county “stocked with life-saving naloxone so that it is close at hand no matter where someone may need it.” Summit County is taking a unique approach to making Narcan kits more accessible—by placing them next to already existing defibrillator kits, on the logic that: “overdoses and sudden cardiac arrest sometimes go hand in hand.”