What do you think of pharmacies dispensing the drug Naloxone without a prescription?

What’s the goal?

If the goal is to keep people from dying, then Naloxone should be freely and quickly available without a prescription (but with a charge, that’s fair). It is a proven means of saving lives.

However, if the goal is to ‘educate’ people, change their behavior and wean them off drugs, then the availability of Naloxone is sort of a ‘get out of jail free’ card, in the sense that it can save them even if the druggie does stupid things.

If pharmacies don’t dispense without a prescription (which adds hours if not days to the process), then people will die. It’s that simple. Without access to Naloxone, more people will OD and die. It’s that simple.

So it goes back to my initial question. “Do you want people to live or do you want people to die?”

I think it is smart to have it as available as possible.

@chyna Your scenario could easily be changed to “having emergency defibrillators around encourages out of shape people to eat junk food and not exercise.”

I get where you are coming from. No I don’t want people to die. I work in a hospital in a small city where we see at least one overdose a day and have had up to 20 city wide with other hospitals taking care of these patients. They are revived today only to come back in the same condition in a few days. They are not learning from having come so close to death or rather can’t control their drug habit. My concern is they will have a false sense of security that they or a friend can use the drug correctly to revive the overdosed person.

Allowing people to die in the gutter while lifesaving medication is available is downright criminal.

That goes for heroin addicts, pill popping wounded veterans, and kids with peanut allergies.

No one is solving the opoid crisis one dead junkie at a time.

I understand your line of thinking, Chyna.

sigh

But I don’t think the learning curve is that simple for addicts.

This is coming from someone whose brother died from an overdose—after several close calls.

A bunch of my close friends from high school got on the H-train. Some of them died.

But I pretty much can guarantee that none of them had enough money to buy this stuff and keep it on them. They were stealing my shit for drug money.

For example my best from high school started using the shit. We lived together in a apartment and during that time he started using. Unfortunately, this was a few weeks after he learned his GF was pregnant. I’m somewhat sure the two things are related.

Junkies tend to attract junkies and while you take a nap you will end up with five mattresses on your living room floor. (that actually happened)

I kick him the fuck out because I don’t want junkies in my apartment.

And anyway I was off to Europe for a month so I just tell the management company I am breaking the lease and I don’t care if it destroys my credit. I go to Europe and when I get back get a new place.

About four months later I get home from work and notice Bryan asleep in his car in my parking lot. I had not talked to him since I moved out. Well fuck, I go inside and play some Tony Hawk and drink some beers. A few hours later Bryan is banging on my door screaming shit like “STOP MASTURBATING AND OPEN THE DOOR”.

So I let him in. He wants to go steal video games from Hollywood Video. While he cuts the plastic off he wants me to stand watch and let him know if anyone is coming while he uses garden shears to cut off the plastic.

This actually works and he steals about 10 N64 games. I am not thrilled. I just want to go home.

So one more stop. His dealer takes video games for heroin.

Back to my apartment. I made it pretty fucking clear that the shit was not to go inside my apartment. He promised and said he would leave if he could take a piss. I complied. Five minutes later I open the bathroom and he is shooting up and I push him the fuck out of my apartment.

After that I didn’t see Bryan for about a decade. He did end up getting clean and is now a fantastic father.

I know that was long but my overall point was that Naloxone isn’t for Bryan. It is for people like me that had/have to deal with junkies.

I would give this a listen.

https://stfudamnit.com/ryan/f/

07 first. It is long but good.

This is the type of thing that could have helped if Jeff had some.