Hill County Health Department praises new Narcan availability

Last week, the Federal Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and local health officials have praised the move, saying it will not only increase accessibility to the drug, but decrease pushback surrounding drug addiction treatment.

“It will hopefully get rid of some of that stigma,” Hill County Public Health Director Kim Berg said.

Berg said she thinks this is a great development that will hopefully save lives.

Narcan is a drug specifically tailored to reverse the effects of opioid overdose, one the department has had available for free for some time as part of its harm reduction efforts throughout the community.

The drug likely won’t be available over the counter until late summer of this year, and Berg said she’s not sure what it will cost once it is, but the health department will continue to have the drug available for free as long as possible.

Berg said there’s no indication that this program, which they run through the Montana Department of Public Health, is at risk, but in the middle of the legislative session, anything can happen.

She said the department can’t do the Narcan administration classes they used to, but they still have the drug available and many people come in every month, including people from local rural fire departments, to get some.

Outside of recording how much Narcan was given and when, she said, the health department doesn’t record any personal information from requesters other than if they are representing a certain local group or organization.

She said they can still train people how to use the drug and anyone with questions about it is welcome to come in or call for information.

Narcan, she said, is remarkably useful, not just because it’s effective at reversing the effects of an overdose, but because it has no negative effects whatsoever, so there are effectively no liability issues to speak of in terms of the one administering the drug.

She also said good samaritan laws shield people from prosecution for drug-related offenses if they call police or emergency services to help someone overdosing, or someone who could be “reasonably perceived” as overdosing.

She said if Narcan is used on someone who isn’t having an overdose it has no effects at all, but if someone is having an overdose it can save their life, which is ultimately the goal of the department and its harm reduction efforts.

Berg said harm reduction as a model of public health care is still not well understood, and while they’ve thankfully encountered little misinformation about Narcan, which is common on social media, they have received a fair bit of pushback on harm reduction in general.

She said things like offering free Narcan, needle exchange programs and raw milk safety seminars get a lot of pushback.

The aim of these programs is to make sure that if people are going to engage in high risk behavior, they should at least be doing it in a way that minimizes potential harm.

“If you’re going to do it, we want you to do it as safely as possible,” she said.

Ideally, she said, people wouldn’t be doing things like drinking unpasteurized milk in the first place, which studies have indicated has no significant nutritional benefit over pasteurized milk, which has been treated to remove potential disease-carrying contaminants, but if they are going to, they should be told how to do that in a safe way.

Berg said when it comes to drugs, people who engage in harm reduction programs are up to five times more likely to seek and get help for their addiction, than those who don’t, so these programs have few downsides, but they still get a lot of resistance.

As for the use of Narcan specifically, Berg said she’s encountered people who’ve told her that addiction is a choice, and by extension so is overdosing, which to her is no different than saying it’s OK to let people die even if they can be saved, which, to her, is absolutely unacceptable.

Beyond that, she said, drug addiction is viewed differently by society than alcoholism, despite there being little to separate the two, with the latter being increasingly viewed with compassion and understanding, while the former is still considered by others to be indicative of some kind of moral failing.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” she said. “These are people’s children, parents, sisters, brothers, friends and we should help them, but they have to be alive for them to be helped.”

Berg said she hopes that this recent decision by the FDA will help destigmatize treatment for addiction and save lives in the community.