i think Narcan should only be dosed for free if say a hospital or Dr gave a person too much pain meds. IE he or she was taking it as prescribed and it was too much. For people who choose to play with fire the price ( money wise) should be on them. I have never seen free insulin programs for diabetics or free epipen programs for people who are allergic to nuts or bees. and people in the above 2 groups did nothing to bring on their problems. I say that as someone getting off pain meds and someone who lost a brother to an Oxycodone OD
I work in the healthcare industry, for one of the largest research hospitals in the world. I see diabetics, people w/a history of anaphylaxis, and countless others being given free medication EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR. I regularly see addicts who started their addiction in a medical setting, when a medical professional over-prescribed opiates or other painkillers, or kept a patient on these drugs long past the point where they should've been weaned off. I also regularly see people who are addicted because they are attempting to self-medicate away the pain of serious mental illnesses, such as PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, etc., in a country where mental illness programs are horrifically underfunded, and the mentally ill are often stigmatized or even openly discriminated against.
Yes, addiction is an awful thing, but the problem is, these drugs WORK. Just like a lot of other self-defeating behaviors which bring people to the psych industry every day, people wouldn't partake in such self-harming/self-defeating behavior if it didn't (initially, at least) work so well to 'cure what ails 'em'...HOWEVER, drug addiction isn't the only life-threatening ailment that can be proven to have a direct correlation to life-style/life-style choices. There are many, many others, such as heart-disease, liver-disease, respiratory illness, cancer, diabetes, and the list goes on and on.
That is one of the reasons why this debate is so frustrating. If the pharmaceutical companies came out tomorrow and said that they had a drug that could bring a patient who suffers from heart disease out of "code" as quickly and efficiently as Narcan brings an overdose patient back to life, BUT they were gonna artificially inflate its price in the same way that they are doing with Narcan, would your response be the same?
it is an equally awful thing for someone to state that the cost of making some bad choices in one's life SHOULD BE (not just "can be") DEATH.
In many of these Narcan cases, we're not talking about a situation where each "junkie" gets to decide whether he wishes, or can afford, to pay a significantly inflated price, we're talking about thousands of people (who are using and will continue to use drugs that may- -or may not- -kill them, whether they have access to Narcan or not) who will no longer have access to Narcan at all before their deaths. We're talking about thousands of situations where, given the chance, these HUMAN BEINGS might have been given Narcan by an outreach center, or free medical center, or some other barely-funded, most likely ostracized-by-the-community agency, which they or their cohorts can then use to save their lives without having to worry that calling an ambulance will also mean significant jail time for themselves and their rescuers. It is a fact that many OD victims die due to their companions' fear of prosecution, and that many people who have struggled valiantly to save an ODing person's life have been rewarded with penal custody.
These are human beings, and even though they have made a decisions about drug use that you would not make, or live a lifestyle that you find abhorrent, it does not give you (or anyone else) the right to consciously withhold lifesaving treatment. By rendering these drugs physically inaccessible to all except those who have the great good fortune to make it to a larger medical center, and to make it in time to recieve successful application of this lifesaving drug, these pharma companies are literally guilty of negligent homicide. These people have murdered sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, friends, and lovers, just as surely as the drugs that they overdosed upon did.
Just remember, one has to be alive and breathing to be capable of deciding to go into recovery.
