Narcan, an opioid overdose drug, could soon hit the market : NPR

In this photo illustration, a Narcan Nasal Overdose was used as part of a Brooklyn Community Recovery Center demonstration on how Narcan can be used to resuscitate a person from a drug overdose on September 1 in Brooklyn, New York City. An ingestion kit is on display. .

Spencer Pratt/Getty Images

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Spencer Pratt/Getty Images

In this photo illustration, a Narcan Nasal Overdose was used as part of a Brooklyn Community Recovery Center demonstration on how Narcan can be used to resuscitate a person from a drug overdose on September 1 in Brooklyn, New York City. An ingestion kit is on display. .

Spencer Pratt/Getty Images

Pharmaceutical manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval to market Narcan over-the-counter without the need for a prescription.

An easy-to-use nasal spray version of naloxone, the drug has a strong track record of reversing fatal opioid overdoses that have surged in recent years, largely due to the spread of fentanyl.

“I think it’s great,” says Chyna Darlington, an Ohio addiction counselor who was addicted to heroin for 16 years.

“The potency of drugs these days is so unfair. Naloxone needs to be available. People need to have it.”

Darrington told NPR that she survived the poisoning because people happened to have Narcan on hand when she overdosed.

“I have been Narcaine six times in my life.

It’s a wonder drug for opioid overdose, but it’s often unavailable

During a severe opioid overdose, people stop breathing and die. Narcan and other forms of naloxone rapidly reverse these harmful effects.

But now, with access complicated by a dizzying patchwork of state and federal laws, the drugs are often hard to come by.

At a press conference this month, Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, noted that about 80,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses last year alone.

With naloxone on hand, many of these deaths could have been avoided.

“Now when you know it’s one drug that could save tens of thousands of lives, there’s no excuse for it not being available everywhere,” Gupta said.

Emergent BioSolutions CEO Bob Kramer said the FDA has now agreed to expedite an application to market Narcan over-the-counter without a prescription, with a response expected by the end of March.

“We believe this is an important step forward for Nalcan and Naloxone,” Kramer said in an interview with NPR.

save a life with a drop of medicine

According to Kramer, the goal is to make Narkan widely available, readily available in people’s purses, school classrooms, stores, businesses, and whenever someone overdoses.

“It’s very easy to manage,” he says. “Put the device in your nostril and deploy the mechanism with the puff.”

Drug policy experts contacted by NPR agreed that making Narcan widely available is an important next step in reducing drug-related deaths. But they also raised one concern.

Nabarun Dasgupta, a drug researcher at the University of North Carolina who works with a nonprofit that distributes free naloxone to drug users, said:

Widely available. But affordable?

Emergent BioSolutions has not yet set a price for the non-prescription version of Narcan. If it’s too expensive, Dasgupta said, many people at risk of overdose won’t buy it.

“With this underresourced mentality that this is an expensive product, people won’t be able to get enough kits to do what they need to do,” he says.

In much of the country, governments, insurance companies and non-profit organizations subsidize the distribution of naloxone.

One hope is that prices will come down as other pharmaceutical companies making naloxone products are also seeking permission to sell the drug without a prescription.

FDA Commissioner Robert Calif suggested earlier this month that his agency plans to approve those applications as they are submitted.

“We believe it’s time to move to over-the-counter naloxone,” he said at a press conference.

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