Long used in emergency rooms and by paramedics, naloxone is increasingly being distributed by state health departments and local community groups, who train users and their relatives to administer the drug, also known by the brand name Narcan. It can be administered using a needle injection or with an atomizer that creates a nasal spray.

Indeed, part of the appeal for law enforcement officials has been the ability to deliver the drug through a nostril of an overdosing person using an atomizer attachment. After a successful pilot program on Staten Island, the New York Police Department said this spring it would outfit its roughly 19,500 patrol officers with the drug.

The spray requires a higher concentration of the drug, one milligram per milliliter.

It is in that formulation that higher prices have been seen, officials said.

“I would hope that with additional demand, there could be deals worked out with these companies,” said Christopher J. Gramiccioni, the prosecutor in Monmouth County, N.J., whose office this year paid to get the drug for local departments.

The form most often used by law enforcement and health departments, and held up prominently at news conferences, is the high-concentration formulation made by Amphastar. No nasal-specific naloxone product has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But it is used “off-label,” in combination with an atomizer, to administer the drug through the nose. (A naloxone injector, designed to be used by people without medical training and approved this year by the Food and Drug Administration, is many times as expensive.)

In an email, Jason B. Shandell, the president of Amphastar, declined to address the company’s pricing of its naloxone formulation “for competitive reasons,” but said that “manufacturing costs have increased on an annual basis.”

A spokeswoman for Hospira, another manufacturer, said its form of naloxone is “on average about the cost of a large pizza.”