In recent years, police and EMS crews have carried naloxone to administer to people overdosing from heroin or other opiates. Last year, Gov. John Kasich signed a law to make the antidote more easily available in Ohio without a prescription.
Bill Denihan is CEO of the Cuyahoga County Board of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health. He praises the increased availability.
“We’ve already saved well over 100 people in the last year-and-a-half with naloxone. So the more it gets into distribution, be it CVS or any other way, is good because it will eventually be used to save someone and reverse the overdose from heroin.”
Denihan says between 2013 and October of last year, nearly 600 people in Cuyahoga County died from heroin overdoses. |