naloxone

Every day in the U.S., more than 40 people die after overdosing on prescription painkillers. Deaths from a more notorious form of opiates — heroin — increased five-fold between 2001 and 2013. Addressing this problem — one that’s often described as a public health crisis — requires action on many fronts, from preventing abuse in the first place to getting those addicted into treatment. But when it comes to overdoses, there’s one answer we know works: naloxone. Naloxone is a safe prescription medicine that’s highly effective in reversing an otherwise deadly opioid overdose. Typically, emergency…

The statistics describing America’s prescription drug abuse epidemic are startling, to say the least. Here are just a few statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: In 2009, prescription painkiller abuse was responsible for nearly half a million emergency department visits — a number that doubled in just five years. Of the more than 41,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2012, more than half were related to pharmaceuticals. In 2012, U.S. health care providers wrote enough painkiller prescriptions — 259 million — to provide every, single American adult with their own…