Walgreens to carry OD antidote naloxone

While administering CPR and calling 911 are important when dealing with an opioid overdose, administering naloxone may be the key to saving a person's life.

It's been hard to get in Hamilton County, but now Walgreens pharmacies will carry it.

Naloxone, also known as Narcan, offers immediate help by restoring breathing for anyone overdosing from the use of an opiate pain medicine such as OxyContin or heroin. Anyone can administer naloxone.

Phil Caruso, a spokesman for Walgreens, says the drug will now be available at Walgreens in the Cincinnati area.

Carol Baden of the Southwest Ohio Chapter of People Advocating Recovery says the decision by Walgreens to carry naloxone is "huge."

Baden and Dr. Shawn Ryan, an addiction specialist and CEO of BrightView Health, have been working since August to push area pharmacies to stock naloxone, which has been available in only two or three pharmacies in Greater Cincinnati.

Told the way to get it on the shelves of area pharmacies was to write more prescriptions, Ryan started writing them. Baden said it finally paid off when a Walgreens pharmacy representative saw the community-based campaign to make the drug more available and said Walgreens wanted to help.

Baden says it's hard to overstate what a difference this will make.

"I am grateful to Walgreens for stepping up," she said. "It's a huge step in the right direction. It's going to save lives."

She stressed that the drug cannot be used to get high, and is not harmful. "This drug restores breathing in someone suffering an opioid overdose," she said. "It's benign. It's strictly an opioid overdose reversal drug."

Baden says the next steps in the campaign to make naloxone more available are to see the passage of Ohio House Bill 4, now in the Ohio Senate, which would make naloxone available without a prescription, but requiring training from the pharmacist and permission from the pharmacy's medical director. She also wants to press drug manufacturers to lower the price of the life-saving drug.

"Naloxone cost $5 or less per dose in October," she said. "Now EMS departments are paying $38 a dose. It's been a generic for years, so there's no reason for this."