From NPR:
The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone, or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose.
Doctors and emergency medical technicians have used Narcan for years in hospitals and ambulances. But it doesn’t require much training because it’s impossible to overdose on Narcan. […] New data compiled for NPR by researcher Alex Kral of the consulting firm RTI International show that more than 2,600 overdoses have been reversed in 16 programs operating across the nation. […]
But Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.
“First of all, I don’t agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That’s No. 1,” she says. “I just don’t think that’s good public health policy.”
Madras says drug users aren’t likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn’t as likely.
Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user’s motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.
As Quirkybird comments, “Yes, because extreme compulsion is easily overcome by the thought that something bad might happen. That’s why people no longer have sex or commit crimes!”
This is an example of how the “war on drugs” — as well as the moral absolutism of the conservative movement (“drug users baaaad!”)– has undermined mercy, compassion, and common sense. Trying to make it more likely that people will die of an overdose, in the hopes that the threat of death will make them seek treatment, isn’t just incredibly ignorant of how people actually work; it’s a disgustingly callous indifference to human life.
By the way, according to the article, studies have found that the Narcan program makes it more likely that addicts will seek treatment. But even if the Bush administration wasn’t wrong on the facts, they’d still be wrong on the morality.
(Anyone else reminded of the conservatives who opposed the HPV vaccine on the grounds that if women have a lower chance of getting cancer they might have more sex before marriage?)
In general, from the public health perspective, the more people with the training and resources to provide aid in life threatening emergencies the better. For example, recovery after out of hospital sudden cardiac death was rare before people in the general public were trained to use CPR, even though medical personnel were taught it routinely for years prior. Having external defibrillators scattered here and there has helped even more. So on experience and probability grounds alone, having narcan spray in the hands of the public is likely to save lives and brain cells.
Overdose isn’t the only problem–non-OD-related side effects can also be a reason for restricting a drug’s use. Narcan’s label indicates cardiac arrest as a possible side effect. I doubt this is the reason for the government position (the War on (Some) Drugs is a fully bi-partisan lunacy), but I wouldn’t say that no possibility of OD should mean a drug is available OTC.
Narcan’s label indicates cardiac arrest as a possible side effect.
Given that its indication is for use when people have stopped breathing and turned blue, I’d say that the risk is likely to be acceptable. Defibrillators can (will) also cause cardiac arrest if used on someone who is not in V fib/tach.
I’m also reminded of the whole faith-based argument about teaching kids about contraception — better that the Bad Ones should get pregnant (or catch a lethal disease, etc.) and Learn Their Lesson . . .
Lots of OTC drugs are really bad for you if used improperly. Shoot, Tylenol can do more long lasting damage to your body if you take too much too often than pot.
I don’t especially think “potential side effect” is in and of itself a good reason to keep something that has proven to be effective at reducing deaths out of public hands.
It really is clear that (some) people have no regard for the lives of drug users. Amp is right about the dangers of moral absolutism.
Dr. Madras’ opposition to the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs clearly indicates the administration’s callous disregard for the politically powerless, economically-disadvantaged underclass whose lives are directly impacted by the fiasco we call the War on Drugs. Until we recognize that drug abuse is a medical problem – and not a criminal problem – we’ll continue wasting millions of dollars, and countless lives, in a fear-driven frenzy to incarcerate generations of poor Americans whose only crime was in their attempt to escape, albeit momentarily, the pain of a future with little hope.
“For he comes, the human child/To the waters and the wild//
With a faery, hand in hand/from a world more full of weeping than you can understand.”
Yeats, The Stolen Child
I am not a huge war on drugs advocate, but you have to give up on addicts after awhile. Whether you see it as a criminal or medical problem most of them are gonna die with a needle in their arm no matter what anyone does.
This is about the dumbest thing he has ever said, but I do remember when his brother Jeb Bush’s daughter was in a treatment center and should have been charged with felony escape, all he had to say then was, “Poor thing, she needed help”.