On Wednesdays for the past few weeks, a band of lifesavers has walked the streets of Healdsburg, popping into shops and talking to owners and store managers about Narcan. Two retired physicians, David Anderson and Walter Maack, join Jeff McGee, the police department’s Social Services team member, and sometimes other members of the Harm Reduction Coalition.
Among their other works, that ad hoc collection of locals in the medical field has taken up placing needle-disposal kiosks in town; now they’ve taken on the mission of getting Narcan into the hands of those who need it—not just users, but their relatives, at work and in public places as well.
Opioid overdose cases began to climb in 2013, and by the end of the decade the rate was still skyrocketing. So the Harm Reduction Coalition began to do public outreach about health dangers. Narcan is a near-miraculous cure for coma induced by heroin or fentanyl, the most well-known synthetic opioid. But Narcan works on heroin as well, or any opioid—it’s the wide presence of fentanyl that makes administering the cure so vital…