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Gerald Taylor IV

Professor Brian Bailie

English 1001

4 December 2017

The usage of heroin in the United States has increased over 100 percent in the last

decade. With the increase of heroin, there is also the inevitable increase of drug overdoses in

America, the rate has risen almost fivefold. To combat the rising amount of overdoses the drug

Naloxone, more commonly known as Narcan, has more frequently been used. Narcan is a

medication used to block the effects of opioids, especially overdoses. Narcan has successfully

reversed almost 27,000 overdoses (Becker).

Fig. 1. Ingraham, Christopher, and Carolyn Y. Johnson. Ohio City Shares Shocking Photos of

Adults Who Overdosed with a Small Child in the Car. East Liverpool, 9 Sept. 2016.

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This photo released by the Cincinnati Police Department is a graphic picture of two

individuals who have overdosed. The CPD released this photo because they wanted to show the

truly horrific nature of heroin. It shows two parents who have just overdosed in front of their

child. In this case, they were pronounced dead at the scene as the police couldn’t get there in

time to revive them with the Narcan (Fig.1).

This is just one example of a fatal overdose, there is an opioid epidemic going on in our

country, more specifically a heroin overdose. It’s one of America’s largest problems today, in

Ohio alone at least 23 people die of an overdose every week (Whitaker). What is America’s

solution to the ongoing threat? They are relying on Narcan to revive these people; the

government has allowed Narcan to be sold over the counter, anyone can get it. While they are

investing in Narcan they are not funding programs that work to help end drug addiction like

long-term rehabilitation centers because that’s too expensive. They see Narcan saving lives so

therefore it is the solution to the epidemic.

Many of people see Narcan as the all saving drug, or the solution to the drug epidemic

but it really is only a small part of the solution to the drug epidemic. While Narcan is saving

lives, it is being too heavily depended upon instead of more long-term solutions to the problem.

Narcan is the quick solution to the problem at hand, the overdose, not the larger problem, drug

abuse.

One of the points that advocates of Narcan state, are that it doesn’t give drug abusers a

safety net and it doesn’t increase drug use. In an interview with a paramedic, Andy Kalb, at The

Forest Park Fire Department he talked to me about his experiences with administering the drug. I

had asked the question; If he believes drug addicts feel as if they have some form of a safety net

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and does he believe it will allow them to experiment with different drugs knowing they have a

safety net:

I think it does… with it being more out there because we have seen an increase of

something they do now. They shoot up in the car with their car in drive and their foot on

the brake so if they overdose the foot falls off the brake they roll into something;

therefore, people see it and people will call and then the Narcan comes to them. They

create their own safety nets…if they try a drug from a new provider and they don’t know

what it is, but they realize they can shoot up with a friend or somewhere public where

people will see and call…they are testing their limit with their new drug or type (Kalb).

Mr. Kalb has been a part of the force for over 10 years and has come across a plentitude

of drug overdoses. He has seen first-hand drug abusers creating a safety net by using in a public

place, so they do not have a fatal overdose. They know that Narcan is so readily available all

they must do is overdose in a public place and then someone will call the police and then they

will get a shot of Narcan to revive them. Mr. Kalb also stated at the end of this quote that people

will use this strategy as a safety net to test their limit with their new drug or type.

More frequently heroin now comes laced with fentanyl and carfentanyl. The drug dealers

lace it with fentanyl because it is a cheaper and more powerful drug than heroin. A major rise in

overdoses is because their heroin is laced with these other drugs. Drug addicts can now get a

better high with the mixture of drugs and use Narcan as a safety net because they have never

tried fentanyl before. They don’t know their limit yet, so they are testing themselves to find the

right amount. With Narcan, it promotes more experimentation with these deadly drugs.

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Drug abusers know that Narcan is incredibly prevalent today and only increasing with

popularity. They abuse the system, so they don’t have any fatal overdoses and any overdose they

have can easily be reversed with little to no consequences. In my own personal experience, I

have seen a similar technique used to prevent a fatal overdose. Two drug users just shot up

heroin and they were testing their limits, one was driving, and the other was in the passenger

seat. The driver was driving around slowly in my neighborhood until they either hit the peak of

their high or they overdosed. The passenger of the car ended up overdosing on my street, in this

situation only one person overdosed so the other person could call the police. If they had both

overdosed the car would have hit a car and someone else would have called the police. The

driver of the car called the police while the passenger overdosed and died; when the police

arrived, they had to give two shots of Narcan to revive the passenger. The passenger proceeded

to wake up, walk around and then throw up in my neighbor’s yard.

Fig. 2 Hawkins, Derek. After Record Overdoses in Ohio, Akron’s Public Schools Will Soon

Stock Opioid Antidote. Akron, 13 July 2017.

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Narcan normally comes in packs of two and with states passing laws, these packs can

now be accessed by everyday individuals. In the city of Akron, Ohio the board of education

passed a bill which would equip all the Akron school district’s resource officers with the

medication (Fig.2). The bill wasn’t passed in response to any fatal overdoses but just as a

precaution. What message does this send to the students of Akron? It seems to be sending a

message to its students saying that you can do drugs and be fine, we have the Narcan to save

you. I am not the only one with this opinion one of the board members, Debbie Walsh, also

shares my ideology.

She states “I think there’s often too much of an attitude of, as long as there’s Narcan,

we’re safe…that’s just a message that I don’t want out there. They too are worried that having it

on hand might be creating an even bigger problem by sending the message to kids, don’t worry,

take drugs. We’ve got Narcan to save you” (Hawkins).

If the access rate to Narcan is increasing, you would think that the rate of heroin use

would be down according to the people who believe that Narcan prevents overdoses and is the

cure for drug abuse. It is not, the usage of heroin is rising and rising higher and faster than ever

before, you could argue that Narcan is new and needs time but Narcan has been out since the 70s

and introduced into modern culture in to late 90s to early 00s it has had plenty of time to stop or

slow the spread of heroin use.

In my interview with Mr. Kalb, we also discussed Narcan as being the solution to the

drug epidemic or just part of the solution:

I sit on Hamilton County Protocol Committee and the board of health is passing out all

this Narcan they are giving it to cops, residence, and anybody who wants to take one and

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they think that it is helping the epidemic…it is not stopping you from doing the drug it

almost gives you a safety net to where you can further push the limits because you know

somebody like your friend is allowed to have it. I would rather see their money spent on

rehabs…there are just no beds and facilities, but it might be three weeks before there is

an opening (Kalb).

Narcan only revives people from an overdose, it fixes the immediate problem at hand,

death, but it doesn’t worry about the long-term problem, drug abuse. The people who are

advocates for the drug tend to only see the short-term effect of Narcan saving a life so therefore

it is the all saving miracle drug. Many of these people don’t consider the future of the person

who just overdosed, they see that they are alive and that is a win in their book. If you look at the

future of these addicts, you will see that only 11% of people who need help for their addiction go

to get the help they need.

President Trump has declared a state of emergency due to the high level of drug use and

overdose rate, to counter this epidemic he came up with a plan. The American Public Health

Association make a statement about his plan stating, “Trump’s declaration came up short, and

that any effective and comprehensive plan would increase access to overdose reversal drugs”

(Facher).

What the American Public Health Association, or APHA, is saying is that any effective

plan would be to increase the access the Narcan. It does not say anything about getting the

people who are overdosing treatment. The advocates for this drug who think of it as a solution to

the drug epidemic is missing the key element of getting these people help so they don’t use and

overdose again. A woman, Nikki Dixon, who lives in Columbus, Ohio has overdosed six times

and each time has been revived by Narcan. She stated that after she would overdose it would take

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her less than 24 hours to start using again (Candisky; Schladen). This isn’t the only case of

something like this, in my interview with Mr. Kalb, he has seen someone overdose twice on the

same day. This is a problem if we just revive people with Narcan and not have adequate support

to help them stop, then we are just delaying the inevitable final and fatal overdose.

Instead of solely relying and investing on Narcan we need to consider more long-term

help to these individuals with drug addiction, drug rehabilitation programs. Right now, drug

rehabilitation programs are very underfunded and underdeveloped. The most effective rehab

program is an inpatient stay which is where the patient stays in a hospital and is provided with a

rigorous medication and counseling schedule. Most inpatient programs only last for 31 days due

to the lack of funding and size of the program. 31 days is not enough to get drug addicts sober.

Only 73% of patients complete the program and only 21% remain sober after five years (“Drug

Rehab”). This is the typical inpatient program, but in earlier years most of the inpatient programs

would last for three to six months with a success rate of up to 70%. (“Long Term Treatment”). It

is incredibly difficult to find long-term rehab centers anymore due to the lack of funding, so they

are going to 31-day treatment programs for inpatient programs.

An article by the Acceptance Recovery Center, explains why 30-day rehabilitation

programs don’t work:

Somewhere around the 30-35th day of sobriety, the addicted brain begins to enter Post-

Acute Withdrawal. The symptoms vary, but the most challenging and pernicious of them

are dysthymia and anhedonia. Dysthymia is a technical term used to identify low-grade,

consistent depression. A person doesn't feel awful - they can still work and function and

socialize, it's just that doing so is unpleasant and uncomfortable. Anhedonia is another

technical term used to characterize the inability to feel pleasure (“Why 30 Day”).

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In these 30-day programs, the brain and the body don’t have enough time to detox from

the drugs. While the drug is out of there system their brain is still craving the drug in a more

long-term kind of way where if they don’t get the drug then they aren’t going to be happy and

their life will just be miserable. They will, in turn, slip back into their old ways and start to use

again some may go back into rehab once it gets bad enough, but some will just keep using until

they have that fatal overdose.

We need to start reinstating the long-term rehab programs and the best way to do that is

take look at the governments spending’s on the drug war and move money around that is being

wasted. There are several investments the government is placing their money into that just isn’t

working. “For example, several longstanding federal prevention efforts, like the National Youth

Anti-Drug Media campaign and Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program – are

costly, ineffective, and might actually lead to unintended negative consequences” (“Federal Drug

Control”). If we took the budget of those programs which is several billion dollars we could

invest that into long-term drug rehabilitation programs which would then reduce the number of

drug users which would then lead to less drug sells so we would then, in turn, have to spend less

on the drug war. If we were to invest in long-term rehabilitation programs, then it would have a

snowball effect where it would then lower all drug statistics to a more reasonable range.

With increasing the long-term rehab programs, we also need to increase the access to

these programs:

Your ability to access treatment quickly is highly dependent on where you live… Data

for 2012 shows that while some U.S. states have no waiting lists for substance abuse

treatment — Connecticut, Georgia and Indiana are among these — others had 100-day

waiting lists. These include Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois and

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New Hampshire. States that fell in between included Alabama (53 days); Colorado (40

days); and Delaware (11 days) (Horton).

In my interview with Mr. Kalb, he stated that there is a window right after a drug addict

overdoses where they want to get help, but that window is only about a few hours and then they

get dope sick or their friend says they have some heroin they could use. In an article from

nbcnews.com, they interviewed a female who has overdose this is her response. “There are little

windows of opportunity with an addict, little windows where I wake up and say, ‘I can’t f---king

do this anymore. Either I got to die or please help me… that window will last for four hours.

Then somebody will call and be like, ‘I got some s—t” (“Beyond Narcan”).

If the window of drug addicts wanting help is just a few hours and it can take up to 100

days to get help in some places, then drug rehabilitation programs are meaningless if we can’t

get these people in them. Along with the increase of long-term treatment, we also need to

increase the space in these programs along with the ease of access for drug addicts to get the help

they need.

A possible solution to this dreaded drug war could have been in our face this whole time

but we missed it because we keep focusing on the short-term solution like Narcan but if you dig

deeper you will find that if you stop the drug users from using the drugs then there will be no

need for Narcan. Narcan is the short-term solution to reviving the person who is overdosing but

while we are dealing with these overdoses we should be looking at a solution to the drug war

increasing rehabilitation programs, so they make overdoses and the use of Narcan rare.

The goal of Narcan is to save someone from an overdose but with some people have

taken that a step further and saying that Narcan will not only save these people it will bring an

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end to the heroin epidemic. Even though Narcan is an amazing drug that has saved countless

lives it is only just a part of the solution to the drug war but if we keep treating it as the final

solution then we will just end up in a cycle of overdose, revival by Narcan, then another

overdose, the cycle will continue until the person finally has that fatal overdose.

Narcan was never meant to be the solution to the heroin epidemic and it will never be the

solution; however, it will be part of the solution. It will revive those who have overdosed and

after they are revived we can hopefully get them into drug rehabilitation centers. It would be

preferable to get them in without the overdose, but many people need that to shock them into

realizing how fragile life is. Narcan will be the first step to recovery for most, the first in a large

series of events.

Fig. 3 Miles, Kathleen. These Charts Show Just How Bad America’s Heroin Problem Has

Become.

Heroin is an ever growing epidemic, in the last decade alone its usage has increased by

50% overall (Miles). The number of users of heroin will only increase as time goes on unless we

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can put a stop to it. The best way to stop this epidemic is to treat these drug addicts like they

have an illness not as if they are a criminal and you should stay away from them. We need to

treat them as if they have an illness because they do have an illness and its addiction. Addiction

is a very serious illness around 23.5 million Americans are suffering from some form of

addiction that’s approximately the entire population of Texas (“Join Together Staff”). Once we

start to treat addiction like the illness it is then we can get them the help they truly need.

If we were to treat each person that overdoses like they were a member of your family

what would you do? You would try to do everything you could do to help them get them all the

help they need, I know I would do everything in my power to help. So, if you treated everybody

like that then we could end the heroin epidemic. That person who overdosed has a family but

sometimes their families can’t get them the help they need, so we as decent humans should try to

help them and give them everything they need just like they were one of ours. If we go about this

problem that way, then we can truly solve the issue at hand.

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Work Cited

Advocacy Tools | NaloxoneInfo.org, naloxoneinfo.org/advocacy/advocacy-tools.

Balko, Radley. "Operation Overdose: Better Dead than High." Reason May 2008: 9. Opposing

Viewpoints in Context. Web. 16 Oct. 2017.

Becker, Deborah. “Reversing Opioid Overdoses Saves Lives But Isn't A Cure-All.” NPR, NPR, 7 Oct.

2015, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/07/445399564/reversing-opioid-overdoses-

saves-lives-but-isnt-a-cure-all.

“Beyond Narcan: Why Heroin Addicts Need More Than an Overdose Antidote.” NBCNews.com,

NBCUniversal News Group, 23 Dec. 2014, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/americas-heroin-

epidemic/beyond-narcan-why-heroin-addicts-need-more-overdose-antidote-n269351.

Candisky, Catherine, and Marty Schladen. “How Long Should We Keep Reviving Overdosed Drug

Addicts?” The Columbus Dispatch, The Columbus Dispatch, 25 June 2017,

www.dispatch.com/news/20170625/how-long-should-we-keep-reviving-overdosed-drug-addicts.

“Drug Rehab: Success Rates and Statistics.” The Recovery Village, 19 July 2017,

www.therecoveryvillage.com/recovery-blog/drug-rehab-success-rates/#gref.

Facher, Lev. “Naloxone Is Missing Puzzle Piece in Trump Opioid Plan, Advocates Say.” STAT, 27

Oct. 2017, www.statnews.com/2017/10/27/naloxone-story/.

The Federal Drug Control Budget New Rhetoric, Same Failed Drug War. Drug Policy Alliance,

2015, The Federal Drug Control Budget New Rhetoric, Same Failed Drug War.

Hawkins, Derek. “After Record Overdoses in Ohio, Akron’s Public Schools Will Soon Stock Opioid

Antidote.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 July 2017,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/13/after-record-overdoses-in-ohio-

akrons-public-schools-will-soon-stock-opioid-antidote/.

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Kalb, Andy. “Narcan.” 19 Oct. 2017.

Horton, Mary Jane. “You're Ready to Get Sober. But You Can't Get Into Treatment Right Away. What

Do You Do?” Addiction.com, 10 Aug. 2015, www.addiction.com/12247/youre-ready-to-get-

sober-but-you-cant-get-into-treatment-right-away-what-do-you-do/.

Join Together Staff. “New Data Show Millions of Americans with Alcohol and Drug Addiction Could

Benefit from Health Care Reform.” Partnership for Drug-Free Kids - Where Families Find

Answers, drugfree.org/learn/drug-and-alcohol-news/new-data-show-millions-of-americans-with-

alcohol-and-drug-addiction-could-benefit-from-health-care-reform/.

“Long Term Treatment Centers for Drug and Alcohol Abuse.” Burning Tree Rehab,

www.burningtree.com/long-term-rehab-programs/.

Miles, Kathleen. “These Charts Show Just How Bad America's Heroin Problem Has Become.” The

Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 21 Feb. 2014,

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/21/america-heroin-charts_n_4817130.html.

Whitaker, Bill. “Heroin Epidemic Kills at Least 23 Ohioans Each Week.” CBS News, CBS Interactive,

16 May 2016, www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-heroin-epidemic-ohio-bill-whitaker/.

“Why 30 Day Alcohol & Drug Treatment Doesn't Work.” Acceptance Recovery, 15 May 2017,

www.acceptancerecoverycenter.com/blog/30-day-alcohol-drug-treatment-doesnt-work/.

Wootson, Jr., Cleve R. "Why This Ohio Sheriff Refuses to Let His Deputies Carry Narcan to Reverse

Overdoses." The Washington Post 8 July 2017: n. pag. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 16

Oct. 2017.

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