Heroin rescue efforts lead to backlash

repeatedly attempted suicide.

Marion, Ohio, Fire Capt. Wade Ralph said heroin has an “extremely expensive” toll on his department, struggling to keep up while being understaffed and relying on donations from health organizations for naloxone to revive those who overdose.

“There’s a human factor to that that some people, I think, just forget about or maybe they ignore it and say, ‘Hey screw it, let them die.’ I’m like, you can’t do that. We have people here, we have guys at the firehouse, whose kids have been hooked on stuff like that,” said Ralph, whose city of some 37,000 people was hit last year by 30 overdose hospitalizations and two deaths in a 12-day stretch.

“If they weren’t doing their job, they’d all be dead,” said Christel Brooks, a recovering addict in Cincinnati who said she’s been clean for 12 years now. She said the problem is a lack of treatment facilities and other resources for intervention before rescued addicts resume drug use.

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Fire Chief Jay Delaney wrote this year to federal and state lawmakers for funding for the naloxone, expecting to administer doses this year worth about $10,000 to $11,000 at $40 each.

“Whether a firefighter is saving one from a burning building or administering Narcan, you’re still saving that human being’s life, so that’s a big deal to us,” said Delaney, whose department has received grant money this year but needs steady funding. “We never thought … that we would have so many that we would have to deal with so it became a funding crisis.”