Drug-overdose antidote put in addicts' hands

WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- Steve Wohlen lay on his front lawn, blue, unconscious and barely breathing, overdosing on heroin.

His mother ran outside, frantically assembling a penlike canister. She dropped to her knees and used the device to deliver two squirts up her son's nostrils.

Within minutes, his eyes opened, color returned to his face, and he sat up, brought back from a potentially lethal overdose by a drug commonly known by its old brand name, Narcan.

The drug, widely sold under its generic name, naloxone, counteracts the effects of heroin, OxyContin and other powerful painkillers and has been used routinely by ambulance crews and emergency rooms for decades. But in the past few years, public health officials across the nation have been distributing it free to addicts and their loved ones, as well as to some police and firefighters.

Such giveaways may have saved more than 10,000 lives since the first program was started in 1996 in Chicago, according to a survey by the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national group that works to reduce the consequences of drug use.

Opponents say that making the antidote so easily available is an accommodation to drug use that could make addicts less likely to seek treatment. Supporters of the distribution programs say getting naloxone into drug users' homes saves lives that might otherwise be lost waiting for an ambulance.

Heroin overdose deaths in the United States nearly doubled over the last decade, from 1,725 in 1999 to 3,278 in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the same period, deadly overdoses from opiate-like drugs, including painkillers, have nearly quadrupled, from 4,030 to 15,597. -- AP