This more compassionate response has been on display this week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Speakers there have talked about addiction and the need for more accessible treatment, and a call by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire for all emergency responders to carry naloxone drew applause from the delegates.

Nonprofit organizations began distributing naloxone to drug users in the mid-1990s, but most of the state laws making it more accessible have been enacted only in the last few years. Between this and so-called good Samaritan laws that provide immunity to people who call 911 to report an overdose, the chances are much greater now that someone who overdoses will be saved and given medical attention instead of left for dead or sent to jail.

The federal government still requires a prescription for naloxone, but that is under review by the Food and Drug Administration, which has also approved a Narcan nasal spray that is easier to administer and is growing increasingly popular.

There is no question that the nation’s death toll from heroin and prescription opioids would be significantly higher without naloxone. Prince, the pop superstar, is just one of those who were saved by it. After he overdosed on Percocet, an opiate painkiller, on his airplane in April, the plane made an emergency landing, and he was revived on the tarmac with naloxone — only to overdose on fentanyl six days later and die when no one was around to administer naloxone.

In 2014, in Maine alone, 208 people died from overdoses. That year, emergency responders saved 829 lives with naloxone. But that was just a fraction of those saved here, as most uses go unreported. In 83 percent of cases, according to a national survey last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, naloxone is given by other drug users, the people most likely to be on the scene, not by emergency responders.