The FDA Is Doing Something That Could Actually Cut Overdose Deaths
Naloxone could be available without a prescription by spring.
By spring, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses may become available at your local pharmacy without a prescription.
Last week Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was fast-tracking approval of over-the-counter sales of Narcan, a nasal spray of naloxone, which can quickly treat and reverse an opioid overdose before it kills.
In November, the FDA issued an assessment that some naloxone nasal sprays might be safe for nonprescription use without the assistance of a health care practitioner. The agency is currently collecting additional data and taking comments until January before making a final decision, but FDA Commissioner Robert Califf has a positive outlook on the outcome.
"[November's] action supports our efforts to combat the opioid overdose crisis by helping expand access to naloxone," he said at the time. "The agency will keep overdose prevention and reduction in substance use disorders as a key priority and area of intense strategic focus for action as rapidly as possible."
The goal date for approval, according to an Emergent BioSolutions release, is March 29, 2023. If it is accomplished, this would be a wonderful and long-overdue development in efforts to rein in opioid overdoses. Deaths from opioid overdoses in America reached a record high of more than 71,000Â in 2021. Total overdose deaths topped 100,000 that year. Easier access to medicine that can prevent these deaths is something the government should permit as part of its harm reduction strategy.
Filter magazine notes that in September the FDA took action to exempt naloxone from certain federal distribution restrictions. The federal government declared a public health emergency in 2017 over opioid addiction and overdoses, and as such, the FDA wanted to reduce barriers to wholesale access to naloxone. Remedy Alliance, a naloxone buyers' club, has been working to make the drug more accessible through making mass wholesale purchases that members then distribute across communities. The September decision by the FDA makes it possible for suppliers to buy naloxone in bulk without possibly running afoul of federal regulations of drug supply chains.
Allowing people to simply pick up Narcan at a pharmacy without a prescription would provide even greater access and be a boon to anybody who knows somebody at risk of overdose. We don't know yet what the over-the-counter price might be, but GoodRx lists the average prescription retail price at $89.70 for a box of two naloxone nasal sprays. Some are below $40 with special offers.
Right now, it appears that Emergent BioSolutions' product may be the first to reach the market, but it is likely to quickly have competition from other naloxone providers, which will help drive prices down. Perhaps the market will provide a solution that our misguided drug war clearly has not, assuming the FDA gets out of the way and allows it to happen.
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Still wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in the future it’s discovered that the DEA is lacing drugs with fentanyl in the same way the feds laced hooch with wood alcohol during Prohibition.
Failure to obey is punishable by death.
I think it is plausible. No drug addicts actually want to do fentanyl.
I’m sure some do on purpose. The problem is the ones who get it when they didn’t intend to. Many of them overdose and die.
On the one hand, your analogy is a huge mess. On the other hand, fentanyl is my favorite flavor!
Fun Dip: Lick an actiq lollipop and dip it in your OTC narcan!
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I was expecting almost the same thing. This, after all, is the same looter Kleptocracy that passed Comstock laws, and in 1907 required that methanol be added to alcohol so as to blind and kill drinkers. Eugenic republicans justified this as a tax-reduction measure, much like the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted to Christianize the heathen and California’s “legalization” is today’s way to rob and murder even more victims for tax evasion–rather than possession of twigs and seeds.
So many common, cheap, out of patent drugs are having shortages because no one wants to make them, but there will be a price war over this?
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Oh it ended drug prohibition? No.
Why would we want to cut overdose deaths?
Let the underclass cull their own herd.
If people are DUMB enough to use drugs then deal with the consequences like death. That is their choice.
BAN NARCAN. NATURAL SELECTION.
First the Code Duello needs to be restored in Congress. Lolita Lebrón’s effort to revive that ancient American method of thinning the entrenched Kleptocracy failed, but not for lack of patriotic intentions.
I suppose even baby steps are better than no steps at all, but there are so many things wrong with this in the back story that I don’t know where to start. The US Government starts a war on drugs with major, unknowable catastrophic intended and unintended collateral damage consequences, only one of which is the marginalization of drug abusers and their deaths from tainted and overdosed drugs. Then the US Government tries to mitigate the “emergency” disaster they created by de-regulating a life-saving drug that never should have been regulated by the US Government in the first place.
If Naxalone were any good, it would follow, ipso facto, that the looter Kleptocracy will suppress it if it has to kill every man, woman and child in America–just as it would to remove any challenge to the 16th Amendment lifted out of the Communist Manifesto. Decriminalizing, deregulating and not taxing nonaddictive drugs–(everything except opiates, barbiturates and their synthetic imitations)–could reverse overdose deaths back to pre-Biden levels. Sadly, God’s Own Prohibitionists prefer death to any such toleration of joy.
The FDA Is Doing Something That Could Actually Cut Overdose Deaths
“the FDA will finally stop directly contributing to overdose deaths.” That’s how the headline should read.
They literally caused deaths with these restrictions.
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