The Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Narcan will make the lifesaving drug more widely available, especially to those who might be likely to witness or respond to opioid overdoses.
Although xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone can reverse the effects of the fentanyl and heroin it is often mixed with.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Xylazine, or tranq, is increasingly being mixed with drugs like fentanyl or heroin and can be difficult to detect. Most people who use drugs are unable to tell if they have been exposed to it.
Only a small amount of fentanyl is enough to be lethal.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Fentanyl’s wide availability in the drug supply has led to an increase in unintentional overdoses. While prevention strategies are available, limited availability stymies their use.
Naloxone can prevent deaths from opioid overdose, but there is no way to reverse the effects of benzodiazepine overdose without risk.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)
Fentanyl adulteration led to the replacement of heroin in the unregulated drug supply of British Columbia. Now that benzodiazepines are present in many opioids, are we headed towards a ‘new normal?’
Annie Storey holds a cross with a photo of her late son Alex Storey, before a march to mark the five-year anniversary of British Columbia declaring a public health emergency in the overdose crisis, in Vancouver, on April 14, 2021.
CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Across the country, overdose deaths have spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Josh Ledesma displays safe injection supplies with outreach specialist Rachel Bolton outside the Access Drug User Health Program drop-in center in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 31, 2020.
Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Treatments for opioid dependence, such as methadone and buprenorphine, are effective. But some people who stand to benefit are missing out.
Naloxone, available as a nasal spray called Narcan or in injectable form, resuscitates 100% of people who overdose if administered quickly.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Opioid overdoses killed 47,000 Americans in 2017 — more than gun violence. Many fewer would have died if they’d been treated with the life-saving drug naloxone, also called Narcan.
Classified advertisement for Leslie Keeley’s Gold Cure.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1884
Jonathan S. Jones, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Considered in historical context, Purdue’s plan to peddle opioid addiction medicines to vulnerable people is not so surprising. Gilded-Age pharmaceutical companies used similar strategies.
Mortality data show only the final result of opioid overdose, not why it happens.
Skyward Kick Productions/Shutterstock.com
The toll of the opioid epidemic is often derived from toxicology reports. These rely on drug tests. A medical historian explains these tests and how they fall short of capturing why people are dying.
Naloxone counteracts the effects of an overdose.
Ethypharm
There are proven ways to reduce drug deaths. Unfortunately, the UK government is not implementing them.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams demonstrates the proper procedure for administering a nasal injection of naloxone on reporter Jennifer Lott, left, during a visit to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., May 17, 2018.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Cyrus Ahalt, University of California, San Francisco
One study argues that naloxone increases opioid use because it protects against death from overdose. But a closer analysis shows Narcan is the number one public health tool to fight the overdose epidemic.
Chris Burkett deposits old needles at a needle exchange program in Aberdeen, Wash., June 14, 2017.
AP Photo/David Goldman
Opioids kill 100 people each day in the US, more than vehicular accidents. Those addicted are often left without treatment. An addiction researcher offers six steps to address the epidemic.
A woman holds a photo of her best friend, who died of a drug overdose in January 2017, before a march to draw attention to the opioid overdose epidemic, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, B.C.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
Catastrophic increases in opioid overdose deaths across Canada require a broad response – tackling housing, food and income insecurity as well as the contaminated drug supply.
President Donald Trump displays a presidential memorandum he signed, declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency in the East Room of the White House, Oct. 26, 2017, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Opioids kill an average of eight people every day in Canada. The federal government must officially declare this a ‘public welfare emergency’ and invest the funds critical to a humane response.
Paul Wright, in treatment for opioid addiction in June 2017 at the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic in Youngstown Ohio, shows a photo of himself from 2015, when he almost died from an overdose.
AP Photo/David Dermer
Robin Feldman, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco
The number of people dying from opioid overdose continues to rise, in part because of cheap street drugs. Yet the price of a drug used to treat addiction is out of reach for many.
Most people who take carfentanil think they’re taking something else, usually heroin.
from www.shutterstock.com.au
Carfentanil is an ultra-potent synthetic opioid. Its only legitimate use is in veterinary practice for large animals such as elephants, but it sneaks into heroin shipments to increase its potency.