Preventing Drug-Overdose Related Deaths Reflected In Recent U.S. Legislation

A number of U.S. legislators are calling for legislation to make the overdose prevention pill naloxone more readily available in order to save lives.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 113 drug overdose-related deaths and more than 6,700 overdose-related treatments occur across the U.S. every day. In addition, overdose deaths from painkillers such as oxycodone rose 23 percent to 16,917 between 2006 and 2011. Deaths due to the opioid drug heroin, jumped 110 percent to 4,397 during the same timeframe.

This urgent overdose epidemic has spurred 24 states, along with the District of Columbia, to pass laws to increase access to naloxone. Seventeen of those states passed the legislation within the last two years.

Political leaders from both parties have backed the naloxone legislation thus far. Massachusetts and Washington have led the way. Utah passed its own bill this year, and legislature in Alabama is presently being endorsed by a Republican lawmaker.

Common provisions within the laws allow physicians to prescribe naloxone to a drug user's friends and family members, and removes legal liability for prescribers and those who administer the medication.

The state of heroin addiction

In recent years, heroin has rapidly become the illegal drug of choice, with 9.2 million users in the U.S.  It’s even estimated that 18 percent of rehab admissions are a result of heroin addiction.

Naloxone can reverse overdoses from such opioid drugs within minutes, which “could be the difference between life and death," according to Louise Vincent, a contract worker for the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. She told the Wall Street Journal that the organization “has dispensed about three thousand naloxone kits statewide since their law took effect.” As a result, 125 overdose reversals have been administered.

According to reports in the past month, a number of areas have experienced alarming numbers of overdose-related deaths, including:

• North Carolina:  712 deaths from heroin and pain medications, according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.
• Ohio: Cuyahoga County alone has experienced 90 overdose deaths due to heroin in just the first six months of 2014, medical examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson reported.
• New York City: Heroin overdoses killed 420 in 2013, the highest in a decade. It was the most common substance tied to overdose deaths.

"We know that these deaths are preventable," said Dr. Hillary Kunins, a deputy commissioner at New York City’s health department said. She didn’t comment on the reason for the resurgence of heroin addiction.  "This is the million-dollar question that many people are struggling with," she added.

Naloxone is proven to prevent accidental overdose deaths. But the above mentioned legislation proposals have had their share of opposition, with arguments “that making naloxone more accessible effectively condones opioid abuse, like providing clean needles to heroin users to protect them from HIV and hepatitis C,” the Wall Street Journal said.

In fact, Republican Gov. Paul LePage said a naloxone law would provide "a false sense of security that abusers are somehow safe from overdose."

Andrew Kolodny, CMO of Phoenix House, an organization that treats substance abuse, simply stated "If you were addicted and you can't access treatment, you're not going to get better.”