Posted on 10/01/2017 9:33:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Editor's Note: The following column is by Diane Dimond.
Every action has a reaction, and every decision has a consequence. Remember that lesson you learned early in life?
A funny thing happened on the way to introducing naloxone to the world of drug addicts. Experts in the field decided this antidote to nearly fatal drug overdoses was a modern-day miracle that would save lives and help steer drug abusers back from the brink. Once saved, they opined, the addict could then seek meaningful treatment.
With that endorsement, the push was on to try to get every ambulance and law enforcement officer to carry doses of the drug, widely known by the name Narcan, which is a brand name for a device that delivers naloxone. Emergency medical technicians were given vials of naloxone to inject into overdosed addicts. Beat cops got nasal spray doses to administer while waiting for an ambulance. Both proved to be highly successful in bringing addicts back to consciousness.
Regulation of naloxone varies by state. In 2010, Quincy, Massachusetts, became the first municipality to require its police officers to carry naloxone. Earlier this year, New Mexico became the first state to mandate that each and every law enforcement officer be equipped with naloxone. And other states are broadening the public availability of the drug. Today it is not hard for addicts, their friends or their family members to get take-home doses -- with or without a prescription -- at doctors' offices, pharmacies or community clinics.
Without a doubt, countless thousands have had their lives saved with a dose of naloxone. But then what? Reports from the front lines make clear that reviving an overdosed patient does not lead the patient to suddenly seek a sober lifestyle. Furthermore, the widespread availability of this antidote has made many addicts feel invincible.
"We gave Narcan to one particular addict 20 times in one month," an EMT from a rural upstate New York town told me recently. "And the parents don't care. They just keep calling us to revive their kid."
Naloxone is amazing. It brings back to life addicts who look lifeless -- their lips blue, their breathing nearly undetectable. It works by surrounding opioid receptors in the brain, spine and gut and blocking the effect of narcotics. What the nonchalant drug abuser may not know is that naloxone also causes severe withdrawal symptoms, which all but guarantees that a user will be left with a massive desire to quickly find another fix to stop the pain.
In Ohio, where the opioid epidemic led to more than 4,100 overdoses last year, one emergency room physician has openly worried about the increasing use of naloxone.
"It's such a frustrating problem," Lisa Deranek said. "We're saving lives, but it's only temporary." Repeat overdose patients are common. "Just throwing Narcan on this opioid fire is not going to fix it, (but) I'm afraid the government thinks it is."
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that in 2014, over 7 million Americans were struggling with a drug abuse disorder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than a half-million people died of drug overdoses between 2000 and 2015. This is a complex problem to tackle.
Simply put, naloxone is not the panacea advocates hoped it would be. And for law enforcement officials, it highlights just one more societal problem heaped upon them to deal with.
"It's just reviving somebody who's going to go back and get high the same day," said Sheriff Richard Jones of Butler County, Ohio. "It's a war that we're losing."
The unsolved problem, of course, is this country's inability to effectively treat drug addiction on a broad scale.
Interestingly, as the nation's overdose problem has increased, so has the cost of naloxone. In 2014, the price was about $19 a vial. By late 2015, the price of a package of two prefilled auto-injectors had jumped to $900. By February 2016, that had skyrocketed to $4,500. The prescription tracking company IMS Health concluded that naloxone sales nearly quadrupled in recent years, from $21.3 million in 2011 to $81.9 million in 2015.
Think what bona fide drug treatment programs could do with an infusion of $81 million. Rather than spend that much money to slap a temporary Band-Aid on a problem, wouldn't it be smarter to divert at least some of those funds to programs that could help addicts wean themselves back to health? Seems like a no-brainer.
Yes, decisions have consequences. It's pretty clear now that sinking tens of millions into a path that doesn't reduce the number of addicts in America was more than just a bad idea. It was a mistake.
“”””Experts in the field decided this antidote to nearly fatal drug overdoses was a modern-day miracle that would save lives and help steer drug abusers back from the brink. Once saved, they opined, the addict could then seek meaningful treatment.””””
Stupid jackasses! How many times has a drunk awakened and declared that since survived the night they’d give up drinking only to search for a bottle by nightfall? Narcan saves the body not the mind or soul
How about napalming the poppy fields of Afghanistan for starters.
Funny thing about death. It cures almost all addictions.
Without a doubt, countless thousands have had their lives saved with a dose of naloxone. But then what?
Then YOU pay for these people making the same stupid decision over and over on our dime.
I have yet to hear an answer to that question.
The heroin and morphine in the US comes primarily from Mexico and South America. We need to stop the flow of illegals across the border to stop that flow of narcotics.
Also, fentanyl and carfentanil can be made in garage labs.
The drug abuse spiral often starts with prescription drugs. People move to heroin or morphine because they are cheaper than prescription drugs. They then move to fentanyl and carfentanil both because they are cheaper yet, and they have more potent and quicker acting effects.
I don't think that giving up on the war on drugs, as libertarians want to do, is very helpful, either. Drug abuse is a complex problem, and there will be no easy solution for it.
One answer is that destroying 40% of the Afghan economy isn’t how to win their hearts and minds.
3 years ago I predicted this would be the case. Never mind stopping the drug traffic, just keep the addicts alive so they keep buying. Make it a safe experience so newbies won’t be so afraid to give heroin a try.
Go ahead and flame me, our very own government agents make boatloads of boatloads of cash from heroin sales. If you kill the customer you no longer get their money.
And in the meantime, the price for Narcan is skyrocketing with ordered and wanted demand, with Pziser being the biggest winner so far.
The poppies in Afghanistan are surviving nicely, too. What the hell are we still doing in that $#!thole? Does anybody know?
no the real problem is we have a society of lazy,quick fix sloths who need drugs and will not quick...
to treat them, why not medically stabilize them and THROW THEM IN JAIL!
forced drug abstinence will at least keep them safe for a while...
Mexico is now our biggest supplier.
I don’t know if I want to pay thousands of dollars to pull drowning people out of the water, only to have them fight me off and jump back in, again and again and again.
Who believes we will ever win their hearts and minds? Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
People are reporting from their communities that at least most known addicts started with marijuana. Fast food restaurants are not proper jobs for rehabilitation—a practice that puts communities even more at risk with possible disease outbreaks and increasing undetected criminal activities.
Then get out. What the hell are we doing there?
And yet so many want weed legalized. Apparently they can’t figure out the connection.
“Go ahead, try some heroin. You won’t die from it, I promise.”
The policy of government-mandated Narcan application to the guy who overdosed is indistinguishable from the pitch of the pusher who sold it to him in the first place.
75 years ago we destroyed essentially 100% of the German and Japanese economies.
Their hearts and minds came around.
Earlier this year, New Mexico became the first state to mandate that each and every law enforcement officer be equipped with naloxone.
I'm so proud of our progressive, forward looking state, taking such good care of its scumbag druggies.
Next they will mandate that the cops and EMTs carry heroin to pass out to the druggies to keep them happy, and the naloxone so they can do it over and over again.
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