How to Improve Narcan and
Actually Save Lives With It.
(NOTE added May 19, 2024: I am not a trained medical professional. I am only a civilian bystander. And I have never used opiates routinely, having only received one injection of morphine in my entire life, after breaking my right leg in December 1992. During my recovery from the fracture and into the present time, I have not used any pain killers.)(Aug. 15, 2023) Narcan: a medication that prevents opiates from functioning in the human body, helping to save the lives of those who have overdosed.
The extreme secretiveness for illicit drug usage created by imposing more strict laws also makes it more difficult to render aid for overdose victims. The Biden plan to impose more strict laws prohibiting fentanyl, an ultra high potency opiate, will probably have the opposite effect on overdose deaths by driving fentanyl usage underground.
Since morphine is fully legal by prescription or as rendered in small amounts by first responders or in emergency rooms or in hospitals to patients, patients using it will generally speak openly about their own usage of it, helping bystanders to render aid (with Narcan) if needed.
How can anyone help the overdose victim if no one knows what substance was injested?
I now live in a state where all drug usage was reportedly decriminalized so many years ago. (Note added May 19, 2024: I do not know if this is actually true.) I have already overheard others around here speaking frankly of their own usage of opiates. At first, I was shocked. But after thinking about it, I feel confident that decriminalization of all drug usage is the best way to create the transparency to enable help to be rendered for those who might overdose on specific substances.
In other words, no one dies from "drugs"; people die from specific substances that should best not be kept ultra secret.
The "drug war" is what is killing people; the whole issue of drug usage should be decided by medical professionals and their patients, not the police with guns drawn.
Medical treatment of drugs was the tradition anyway. Police seem happy here to no longer be involved in the drug issue, so relations between law enforcement and the general public has also improved in this state.
It could also be argued that the issue of soft and hard drug can be discussed openly in this state, which hopefully steers more people away from hard drug usage altogether.
(NOTE added May 19, 2024: the decriminalization of hard drugs in Oregon did not seem to be a success. The legislature there recriminalized hard drugs. It also has just been reported that the newest statistics show that drug deaths are still increasing in the USA.)