City Seeks To Avoid Using Narcan To Save People Who Overdose – IOTW Report

City Seeks To Avoid Using Narcan To Save People Who Overdose

Friday, 30 June 2017, 0:42 BFH Uncategorized 31

Blue Lives Matter-

Middletown, OH – In an effort to fight rising costs to deal with overdoses and its heroin problem, the city of Middleton wants to implement a controversial proposal that would let addicts die.

City Council member Dan Picard has proposed a ‘three strikes system’.  After a person overdoses twice, and is revived with Narcan, that person has to perform a certain number of hours of community service, equal to the amount of money spent on the emergency response, according to WLWT.

The third strike is the controversial part.  Picard said, “If the dispatcher determines that the person who’s overdosed is someone who’s been part of the program for two previous overdoses and has not completed the community service and has not cooperated in the program, then we wouldn’t dispatch.

 He said that this is not the answer to the city’s drug problem; but an attempt to save the city’s finances.  Picard said, “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to maintain our financial security and this is just costing us too much money.”

In response, the Middleton Fire Department said that ‘by law’ it has to give Narcan if it responds to an overdose. That appears to be why the city wants to avoid telling the fire department about the overdoses.

Overdoses in the city have already doubled for this year.  In 2016, there were a total of 532 overdoses.  As of mid-June, there have been 577 overdoses so far this year.

In 2016, the MFD spent more than $11,000 on Narcan, while this year, $30,000 has already been spent.  Officials said that the increased amount is due to more overdoses and the strength of the heroin that an addicts are using.

Middleton Fire Chief Paul Lolli said, “We are faced with stress on our services, particularly the EMS services where we can do six to eight opioid overdose runs a day.”

Legal advisors are still studying the city’s proposal  While they wait to see what happens, the MFD is applying for grants, and trying to raise money through donations for additional Narcan.

ht/ sam s.

You know how you can store your own blood? Maybe the drug addicts should buy a little of this Narcan and ke… yeah, that isn’t gonna happen.

 

31 Comments on City Seeks To Avoid Using Narcan To Save People Who Overdose

  3. I can understand getting to that point. A couple weeks ago on the local Seattle news there was a story about opioids and overdoses and one of the junkies that was interviewed admitted he had been saved by Narcan 20 times so far. I don’t see a problem with 3 strikes and you’re out.

  4. I hope picard gets hit buy a pissed off doper – that’s karma.

    Make them pay for it, but don’t deny services. What
    next will they go for? House fires? Car wrecks? GPA
    having a heart attack because he’s older than 70?

    I’d find that dude and treat him to a baseball bat summit.

  5. Good Lord, Middletown. I lived with a couple in ’76 who hailed from Midtown. It was all about the drugs back then then, albeit not opiates. Everything wrong with Appalachia condenses itself in Midtown. Read “Hillbilly Elegy” by J. D. Vance. Middletown plays front and center.

  6. CONFLICTED:

    1. Some of these people need to die, but not by some bureaucratic check list.

    2. We WASTE billions by giving it away every time Pakistan has a little flood, but we don’t have money for our own people

    It’s a fuck fuck fuck fucked world man. . .

  7. My wife is a nurse, and she just told me about a patient she had to take care of today… 5 months pregnant and an active heroin addict with sepsis from an infected hand she uses to inject heroin with. And she has two other kids. Heroin addicts are a waste of fucking air a curse on everybody who depends on them. They’re shit excuses for human beings, and they she be grateful any city gives them two goddamn chances to live, much less an infinite number.

  8. reboot, how do you make someone pay for services when the only source for money that they have is crime? Do you think they are going to write a check for half their take until they have reimbursed our brave first responders and whatever jurisdiction they work for for their time, trouble and expenses?

  15. Amphastar, Pfizer, Adapt, Kaléo, and Mylan — all have jacked up the price over 1000% in a 2 year period. The drug is cheap actually cheap except these pharmaceutical companies are in competition to see who can charge the most because the government is buying. Hey it’s only tax payer money.

  17. Wow, tough debate.
    Where there’s life there’s hope.
    “Many that live deserve death, and many that die deserve life.” (Tolkien)
    If we are all equal, then life saving medicine should not be withheld, even to the lowest among us.
    Save the money by restricting the use of EBT cards to buying food to cook at home, not paying no job having folks to eat at Jack in the Box.

  19. I see no problem with it. The same people come in month after month consuming an extraordinary amounts of resources and medical expertise to keep them alive and clean and yet they come back for more. They aren’t paying for their life saving interventions, we are. The dangers of heroin and other narcotics are well known. If you still care to dabble with it, then pay up when we save your ass or three strikes youre out.

  20. the generic is available for $13.92 a dose at Goodrx.com from CVS. X 577 doses is just a bit over 8k.

    EMS can go on goodrx.com and buy with the free coupon, or order from Canada, or Mexico, or India.

    Generic with discount, or probably from another country, is the only way to go.

    Why didn’t they think of this? who is getting the kick-back?

  22. I live a stone’s throw from Middletown. What a hellhole. Right between Dayton and Cincinnati, it is a stop-off from all the heroin.

    Here, a major grocery chain sells Narcan through their pharmacies without a prescription… But what druggie is going to spend their ill-gotten cash on keeping their own stash of Narcan when they can simply spend it on more heroin and count on being ‘revived’ by EMS over and over?

  23. This hits home. My wife and I are from Middletown and my wife’s 18 yo niece OD’d 2 years ago on heroin. (look up Alison Shuemake). Narcan wouldn’t have saved Alison, but it has saved many. And we’re not talking about a huge amount of money here, just a few thousand. Get rid of just one school admin and you can fund all the Narcan you need.
    The problem stems from the cheap heroin brought in by MS13 in Hamilton. My uber-lib SIL still does not see the connection.

  24. When you over dose, you’ve already sealed your fate. There’s a lawyer on KFI who took a call from a woman who wanted to sue the hospital for reviving her. Her papers state “DNR” (do not resuscitate). He asked her what the damaged were and she said “I didn’t want to live, I’m in pain!” The KFI lawyer told her: “So go kill yourself, just don’t jump off the overpass and make me sit in traffic while they scrape you up.” I feel the same way with Od’ers, let them die and end their misery and those who have to deal with them. My nieces husband OD’ed, everyone’s life continues on but his.

  25. “There but by the Grace of God …”
    Don’t make the EMTs culpable – or the Dispatchers.
    I’m fairly certain that plenty of money is being wasted in Ohio on stupid, socialistic, nonsensical, progressive, or faggoty bullshit.
    The citizens of Middletown should decide.
    They should vote on a specific tax to support the junkies – Yes or No – straight up.
    It’s called Freedom.
    Liberty.
    Democracy.
    Choice.
    Deciding your own future.

    izlamo delenda est …

  31. Addicts are going into hospital emergency room bathrooms, using the emergency help string to tie off and overdosing on purpose. They think it’s the best high they’ll get if they get close to death and being at the hospital will get Narcan right away.
    Sad.

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