What Next: Narcan Over the Counter

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The FDA just approved a version of Narcan, the most commonly used version of the overdose prevention medicine naloxone, for over-the-counter sales. The move comes in response to overdose deaths steadily rising since the late ‘70s and around 100,000 Americans dying from overdose just last year. What took so long? Guest: Nancy D. Campbell, department head at Rensselaer’s department of science and technology studies, author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A couple weeks back, when the Food and Drug Administration decided to make a nasal spray
0:12.5	that is the power to reverse an overdose available over the counter.
0:16.6	Nancy Campbell thought about her own supply of this drug.
0:19.5	It's called Narcan.
0:21.2	She keeps it on her pretty much all the time.
0:23.8	Well, I carry my Narcan with me in my backpack.
0:27.9	I'm a professor at a college, and since I talk about Narcan so often, I just have to always
0:35.4	have it with me to pull it out.
0:39.2	Nancy is a historian of science and technology at Rensselier Polytechnic Institute in New York.
0:45.0	She studies drug use and abuse.
0:47.6	She says she can't quite tell how big of a deal this Narcan news is going to be.
0:53.4	In the lock zone, the drug Narcan dispenses, it's been available without a prescription
0:58.4	in other countries for years.
1:01.3	But Nancy knows that here in the US, there have been real barriers to getting your hands
1:05.9	on this stuff.
1:07.6	I did have the experience once of going into a Pennsylvania pharmacy and trying to purchase
1:14.7	a lock zone and having the pharmacist look at me and say, that will cost you $7 to $800.
1:23.8	Whoa.
1:24.8	And I thought he didn't even ask for my insurance.
1:29.3	He didn't ask me where I was from.
1:31.9	He simply made a judgment.
1:34.0	Hello, why do you think he did that?
	...

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