WASHINGTON — It can pull someone back from a heroin overdose. But now the price for the antidote is going up, and police and health experts are concerned.
Maryland State Police officers have used Narcan to save six lives since last fall. Police officers and EMTs across the mid-Atlantic are training to administer the nasal spray antidote that can help someone recover from an opioid overdose.
“We believe it is an effective tool to help us combat the heroin overdose epidemic we’re seeing in Maryland and across the country,” says Greg Shipley, with the Maryland State Police.
But Shipley says the department, which has nearly 800 officers trained to deliver the lifesaving drug, noticed it has gotten more expensive in the past year.
Police departments in Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties have trained to administer Narcan. But the nasal spray version of the drug, which is the kind officers carry, is twice as expensive as it was a year ago.
Many wonder if the increasing cost will be prohibitive on some programs or police departments currently using Narcan. It’s a concern that has reached Capitol Hill.
Last week, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., co-wrote a letter to the manufacturer of Narcan, Amphastar, asking that it justify the need to raise prices.
“We’ve been looking at this for a couple months. It has been on our radar,” says Mona Gahunia, chief medical officer for Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The department has worked to combat the rising use of heroin in the state by introducing programs to train everyday people to administer a version of the antidote called naloxone, distributing it to local health departments and making it available in area drug stores.
Narcan is integral to the state’s Overdose Response Program, and a rise in cost for the drug could affect everything from the life of those programs to the Medicaid budget, Gahunia says.
