It started out as a picture of a sign — the kind that churches and fast food places have outside, where you place individual letter cards to spell out a message — outside an auto repair shop in Ohio in 2017, then it became a viral meme that still makes its rounds on social media. The sign reads: “Why is Narcan free to a dope addict but my insulin is $750 a month[?]”
A similar question has been posed to members of our newsroom after The Dominion Post covered Save a Life Day this weekend.
The short answer: Narcan (a brand name for naloxone) is a rescue medication, not a treatment for substance abuse disorder.
If you are dying, first responders will give you whatever it takes to revive you, not to heal you. If you have a heart attack, EMS will give you nitroglycerin, not heart surgery. If you have a stroke, they will give you anticoagulants, not cut you open to remove the clot. If you have a severe allergic reaction, they will give you epinephrine, not immunotherapy.
And if you overdose on opioids, first responders will give you naloxone to save your life, but they won’t give you rehabilitation. That, you’ll have to secure for yourself. But you have to be alive first.
Naloxone, like any medication or prescription drug, is not “free.” EMS will charge for naloxone like it charges for anything else. Narcan can also be purchased from the pharmacy, or it might be provided by a community organization. In the case of Save a Life Day, the Mon County Health Department gets its naloxone from the state, according to Mary Wade Burnside, which has been paid for by a grant. (If you take issue with the price of your prescription drugs, please encourage your state and federal representatives to support legislation that would help lower the cost of prescription drugs.)
But the people focused on giving away “free” naloxone missed the point of the whole event. While naloxone won’t hurt someone who doesn’t have opioids in their system, says the National Institute on Drug Abuse, it will save the life of someone who has overdosed.
Just like anyone should be able to administer CPR in an emergency, anyone should be able to use naloxone to reverse an overdose.
Because if that person is alive, they can get treatment. If that person is alive, they can get the medical and psychological help they need to reach sobriety.
When we can talk about addiction — what causes it, and what it causes — with compassion and candidness, we can begin to strip away the stigma associated with the disease. Events like Save a Life Day help communities understand that keeping substance use disorder a dirty little secret, something everyone knows about but no one will discuss, only makes the epidemic worse. Without stigma acting a barrier, it’s easier for people with substance abuse disorder, and their loved ones, to access resources, peer networks and all the foundational services that recovery is built upon.
