Pubdate: Mon, 20 Jul 2015
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Electa Draper

STATE PUSHES DRUG

New Law Expands Use of Naloxone, an Antidote for Narcotic Overdoses

There is a narcotic that public health officials and researchers are 
practically begging pharmacists to push and users to inject or inhale.

Naloxone is a narcotic drug that reverses the effects of other 
narcotic drugs such as heroin or prescription opioids, including OxyContin.

It is an antidote for opiate overdose.

Colorado lawmakers have passed two measures-the latest effective July 
1- intended to expand use of naloxone, also known by brand names 
Narcan and Evzio.

"It's not recovery from addiction. It just saves lives," said 
University of Colorado Hospital ER nurse Dawn O'Keefe. She used it to 
save her son's life when he overdosed during his battle with addiction.

"Every parent, everyone, needs to have access to this drug," O'Keefe 
said. "I'm so surprised by the people who don't know anything about it."

Her son got his second chance and is in recovery, she said.

A naloxone shot, injected into the arm or leg, or nasal spray, 
temporarily knocks the original overdosed opioid off the brain's 
receptors, temporarily restoring normal breathing and buying time for 
a patient to get to a hospital.

In May 2013, the Colorado legislature passed a law that doctors could 
prescribe it not only to opiate users, but to third parties - family 
members and loved ones.

"Prescribers still were not prescribing enough of it," said Lisa 
Raville, director of Denver's Harm Reduction Action Center, a drug 
education, counseling and treatment center.

A recent Kaiser Permanente study showed Colorado clinicians hesitated 
to prescribe naloxone to patients for fear of offending them or 
encouraging riskier behavior with narcotics, even though they 
understood its potential to prevent deaths.

"We're in the middle of an epidemic," Raville said, "and this could 
save lives. So we went back and passed another law this year."

Under the May 2015 law that just went into effect, pharmacies, harm- 
reduction organizations and first responders can, under standing 
orders from a physician, provide the drug to any users and third 
parties requesting it.

Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health 
and Environment and the state's chief medical officer, set up a 
blanket standing order under his license to cover pharmacies that 
don't have their own physician.

"It's not over the counter, but it's the closest thing we can have to 
over the counter," said Robert Valuck, professor at theUniversity of 
Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He 
supports the effort to push naloxone.

Dan Scales of Scales Pharmacy said in the first week of July he 
believed he was the only independent pharmacy in the state acting on 
the expanded- access provisions. But he thought it was only a matter 
of time and education.

At least one Coloradan died each day in 2013 from an unintentional 
drug overdose - most were prescription painkillers, according to the 
state health department.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom