mark eisenberg - Comment

I am a physician working at a community health center in Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston. Charlestown has been devastated by heroin addiction with many drug overdoses over the past decade. In addition to providing treatment and prevention, the health center decided to provide intranasal naloxone to drug users and their family members to reverse overdose deaths. All of our doctors and nurses are on board with this. it is relatively simple to sit down with our patients or family members to explain how to use naloxone in case of overdose. We have received many reports of lives saved by this simple method. Although there was some fear at the start that providing naloxone would encourage drug users to "push their limit", there is no evidence that this is happening. After further reflection, it became clear that this wouldn't happen as the consequence of overdose reversal leaves the patient feeling awful. I have no doubt that this life saving treatment which be more widely made available. Our next health center endeavor will be to provide it with each opioid prescription to further disseminate its availability.