Seeing the pros and cons of the multiple naloxone (narcan) options, it is an absolute shame that neither the spray nor the injection is available for free to the public. As of now, it is almost impossible to get your hands on the injectable dose. If your son or daughter wasn’t breathing from an opioid overdose, would you feel comfortable knowing our city only offers a nasal spray that must be breathed in and congested to save their life? I didn’t think so. We need resources to enable our community to receive narcan injections to help fight the stigma and truly make a difference and save lives. 

I wanted to add a quick personal statistic that has happened in my life/career:

I had to administer narcan 17 times while working in the SUD industry (in Florida). Out of those, 16/17 lived.

Out of all of those men and women: 8/17 were unresponsive and not breathing on their own and some even had blue lips (essentially close to death).

Out of those 8…. 7/8 lived, and to this day it saddens me, 1 died. And that ONE time, was while using the nasal spray form on a young man that could not breathe on his own. 

Hopefully these numbers/statistics make you see how important it is to have the narcan injection as an available option to the public. An ideal goal would be allowing free access to either option, and in a perfect world we would have a small facility or online video training of how to properly administer either option. 

Please… help fight to help save lives in our state and our communities. Every signature gets us that much closer!