Police split on using anti-overdose drug
The sheriff of Clermont County firmly believes it’s a call of duty for his deputies to carry a nasal spray that brings people back from the brink of death by drug overdose. Less than 50 miles away, his counterpart in Butler County is dead set against it, saying it subjects deputies to danger while making no lasting impact on the death toll.
The divide over naloxone, the popular overdose antidote, between nearby sheriffs in two hard-hit counties in one of the hardesthit states for drug deaths shows just how elusive solutions are on the front lines of the U.S. opioid crisis.
Some police officials cite lack of resources for obtaining, maintaining and tracking supplies and for training in when and how to use it. They worry about taking on new duties they say are better suited for medical workers, divert them from fighting crime and can put them in danger. They get support from some citizens weary of people who overdose repeatedly.
Police who do carry it say that development of a nasal spray called Narcan makes naloxone simple to administer, that the $75 twodose kits are usually given to them by health departments or community organizations, that it’s not a major burden to track and maintain supplies and that it’s a natural extension of their mission to serve and protect.
“I just say from my personal experience that it is right thing to do,” said Sheriff Steve Leahy, whose Clermont County begins in the eastern Cincinnati suburbs, then rolls across hilly fields into Appalachia. Leahy, part of the early wave of police advocates of naloxone, acknowledges he was more inclined to support it after seeing someone close to him struggle for years with heroin.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Leahy said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re going to get out of this by hugging everybody, but ... you know, no matter what their plight is and how they got to where they are, it’s not for us as law enforcement to decide whether they live or die.”
Butler Sheriff Richard Jones, whose county includes growing northern Cincinnati suburbs, older industrial cities and rural areas, also voices compassion. He lost a brother at a young age to alcoholism and drugs, he said, and he recounts cradling infants twitching from the effects of their mothers’ drug use.
But people using drugs make choices, he said: “Knowing that they can die from it, but they still do it.” (Addiction specialists and federal drug authorities say it’s more complicated than that; repeated uses of a drug can result in brain changes and the disease of addiction.)
And, Jones said, people who overdose can be combative when they come to, he said; an officer bent over giving naloxone could get “a brick to the head.”
“It’s not what we’re supposed to do,” said Jones, known for blunt talk on such issues as illegal immigration and Donald Trump’s GOP presidential campaign. “We won’t do it. Period.”
A recent visit with Jones by Associated Press reporters came the morning after a man in Middletown revived by firefighters came back to consciousness in attack mode. He injured a firefighter and tried to bite and punch others.
Such instances are rare, authorities say. Quincy, Massachusetts, police pioneered naloxone seven years ago and have reversed nearly 800 overdoses without a single officer being injured, said Lt. Patrick Glynn.