If you aren’t familiar with Narcan, you should most definitely get to know it, because it’s amazing. It is a drug that can immediately revive a person overdosing on heroin, saving their life.
There’s a push to get law enforcement and first-responders the drug to carry at all times, since America is in the throes of one of the worst heroin and opiate epidemics in the world. Narcan, when delivered, blocks the brain’s opiate receptors, counteracting the effects of the drug.
You can watch police use it here, on a man in Philadelphia who shoots up on a bus, then keels over. Moments later, he’s alright. It really is a wonder drug.
Michael Meeney was taken to a hospital afterwards. He was also arrested for heroin possession, but he’s alive. Narcan for all.
Of course, this being one of those War on Drugs things, not everyone is happy about heroin users not dying.
Last year, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) vetoed a bill to expand the availability to police and firefighters, as well as to family members of addicts, arguing that having easy access to an inexpensive antidote could give addicts “a false sense of security” and actually encourage drug use. (Maine’s legislature unanimously passed a similar bill this spring, which LePage allowed to become law without his signature.)
Ha.
[Via The AP]