Surgeon general urges more people to carry anti-overdose drug naloxone
WASHINGTON — Public health and addiction experts praised the U.S. surgeon general’s call on Thursday for more Americans to carry the overdose-reversal drug naloxone. But they also said more funding for treatment and prevention is needed to truly address the nation’s growing opioid epidemic.
“What I think the states really need is a sustainable funding plan,” said Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania secretary of health and physician general.
A plan “that the states can count on to work with our stakeholders with sustainable funding over a number of years would be very important,” she said.
After all, “vision without funding is hallucination,” said Dr. Jay Butler, chief medical officer at the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
Butler and Levine made their comments during a conference call of state health officials to discuss the Trump administration’s latest efforts to fight the growing problem of fatal opioid overdoses.
On Thursday, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams issued a national advisory urging more people to purchase and keep naloxone ready in case an opioid overdose victim needs emergency lifesaving treatment. It was the first time since 2005 that the Surgeon General’s office had made such an appeal.
Naloxone, which is carried by most police and first responders, is available without a prescription in most states.
“Each day we lose 115 Americans to an opioid overdose — that’s one person every 12.5 minutes,” Adams said in a statement. “It is time to make sure more people have access to this lifesaving medication, because 77 percent of opioid overdose deaths occur outside of a medical setting and more than half occur at home.”
Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of Shatterproof, a national nonprofit that works to reduce drug addiction, said he feels naloxone should be as readily available as public fire extinguishers.
Mendell praised Adams’ call for broader naloxone access, but said there was “more than frustration” with the Trump administration’s handling of the opioid problem thus far.
Mendell said the opioid plan Trump introduced in New Hampshire several weeks ago lacked details and specifics about how to achieve its various goals. Nor was there a timetable offered.
Dr. Kelly Clark, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, said Adams’ call
for expanded naloxone use was “important to highlight opioid addiction as a medical condition that needs to be treated as a public health emergency.”
Ward said she was also “gratified” to see the House and Senate consider legislation that would increase access to evidenced-based treatments for addiction, such as medication and psycho-social supports “that really are the cornerstones of treating opioid addiction.”
She added that “more funding is going to be needed. But the funding really needs to be funneled towards the things we know work for prevention and treatment, rather than (for) historical care that has not been proven beneficial.”