Or maybe it’s just me being a product of my place and time: living in a province that has expanded from having one safe injection site (which had to fight to stay open when old-school war-on-drugs afficiandos were the federal PTB, and succeeded in that health care delivery is a provincial issue) to three, and where Narcan shows up on transit ads so everybody – not just first responders – is aware how to save a life. Maybe I’m just some bleeding heart lefty who’d let addicts rob me, as a taxpayer, blind.
Or maybe I think it’s inhumane not just to the person who dies from the overdose, but to the people who have to stand by helplessly and watch, including a first responder. Harm reduction isn’t just about reducing harm to those addicted, it’s about reducing harm to everyone. Safe injection sites aren’t just about giving people a place to get high, they also reduce disease spread and the number of dirty needles on the street. They mean less first responders, neighbours and children watching someone die or having to discover someone too late. Even if you don’t care about someone who is addicted, what about everyone else?
Even if you want to remove any trace of humanity from this- doesn’t it open them up to some huge wrongful death lawsuit when they can’t save someone they should be able to? And surely that (those?) lawsuits would cost a huge amount of money? And surely the fiscally conservative folks would like to not pay those huge sums, right?
That’s the theory. In practice they’re there to maintain a status quo. It’s isn’t always a bad thing but when it goes off the rails it really goes off the rails.
Here’s a visual representation of where America is in this process right now;
I heard a story on NPR recently where a reporter conveyed a story from an ambulance crew. They got a call for an overdose in the morning, so they treated a male victim with this stuff, and took him to the hospital. Not long after, that same day, they were dispatched to the same house, where they found that the previous man’s wife had overdosed after returning from the hospital. She was treated with this stuff, and carted her to the emergency room. Within hours, they were dispatched again to the same location, this time the teenaged daughter had overdosed.
The reporter indicated that there has been an apparent uptick in people overdosing in public settings, exactly for the purpose of being rescued and revived by narcan. Sort of an unintended consequence.
They also mentioned that they have to give multiple doses of the drug because the stuff basically induces instant withdrawal symptoms, and the drug user either gets really ill, or sometimes is upset about being forced out of their high. So they try to sneak up on the lowest possible effective dose.
The sheriff mentions that they aren’t expected to do epipen shots for people having an allergic reaction or insulin shots for diabetics. That gives it some basis in reason. Especially if they aren’t trained to diagnose and treat medical conditions. There is of course liability and other misery if they are expected to diagnose and treat medical conditions, but make a mistake while doing so. So it’s not entirely unreasonable to not want to.
But I don’t agree. They are often first responders and it should be fairly easy for them to carry a kit of things like that and learn how to administer them. (As they could be trained in CPR and basic first aid). And besides that the rest of the things that he said make him sound like a bit of an asshole who just feels that helping in that situation isn’t ever useful. He should’ve just said something positive like “We help in the ways that we can help best, but we leave it to our EMTs to handle the medical diagnoses and treatments because that’s their specialty.” and ended with that. Rambling on about babies in toilets and how he’s afraid of people who just regained consciousness after OD’ing really doesn’t make him look good or help his argument.
