The Obama administration has agreed to fund a heroin overdose reversal agent as part of a nationwide program to curb drug-related deaths.

Heroin-related deaths in the U.S. have nearly doubled between 2011 and 2013. In 2013, the number of people who died from overdose rose to 8,200.

The Obama Administration is taking action to combat the issue by expanding access to a drug that can stop a heroin overdose. The life-saving opioid antagonist, called Naloxone, will be available without a prescription in more than 30 states.

Reversing A Heroin Overdose

The goal of educating non-medical personnel about how to use Naloxone is to prevent overdoses outside of the hospital setting. 
Image: Heroin Addiction

Naloxone, which has a 90 percent success rate if consumed in time, reverses the effects of narcotic drugs. While doctors may use it when pain management complications from surgery arise, it is particularly effective in combating an opiate overdose.

Naloxone can be administered intravenously or through the nasal passage. It blocks the effects of extreme drowsiness, slowed breathing or loss of consciousness.

It counteracts central nervous system depression and allows the respiratory system to work, helping the overdose victim to breathe. The medication has no effect on a person who does not have opioids in their system and therefore, has no potential for abuse.

The Obama Administration’s Plan

Naloxone is also known by the brand name Narcan.
Image: ACE Surgical

The Obama administration launched private and public programs to address opioid and heroin addiction. The programs focus on prescription drug abuse, in addition to issues with substances sold on the street. The program includes a variety of initiatives, including but not limited to:

• Over-the-counter access: CVS Pharmacy will expand its 1-month-old program selling naloxone to patients without a prescription from locations in 12 states to 32 states in 2016.
•  Funding for low-income communities: The Department of Health and Human Services has given $1.8 million to lower socioeconomic classes to purchase naloxone and train first responders on how to use it.
• Native American populations: The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service will provide BIA police officers and investigators with the naloxone.
• Police education: The Fraternal Order of Police will educate 330,000 members about identifying and treating opioid overdoses. The International Association of Chiefs of Police will educate law enforcement on how to prevent overdoses. City and state police officers will begin to require police officers to add naloxone to their everyday toolkit.

In August, the administration announced a $2.5 million strategy to combat the public problem of heroin abuse. Deeming it a health issue instead of a criminal justice problem, political parties on both ends of the spectrum have moved to support increased access to Naloxone.

Obama visited Charleston, West Virginia to unveil the programs. The state is particularly affected by addiction with an overdose rate of more than twice the national average.

Critics argue that the policy is vague and that the education initiatives are hard to implement. Regardless, the program will provide widespread access by doubling the number of doctors who can prescribe naloxone.

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After the announcement, players from both sides of the issue chimed in. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the methane rules are “an important start,” but that they and other environmental groups are still critical of Obama’s plan. Because it focuses on new oil and gas sites rather than existing ones, they feel stronger action must be taken to regulate existing sources of pollution.

On the other hand, the American Petroleum Institute has called these additional regulations unnecessary. “Methane emissions have fallen thanks to industry leadership and investment in new technologies. And even with that knowledge, the White House has singled out oil and natural gas for regulation,” CEO Jack Gerard said.

Obama’s Methane Rules at a Glance

SF Examiner

Here are the main points you should understand about Obama’s plan of attack:

The Focus is on Methane

The Obama administration is tackling global warming by specifically focusing on methane emissions as opposed to reducing other sources of pollution. White papers released last April suggest the White House’s current plan will build on a set of restrictions proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2012. The plans is to attack emissions along the entire supply chain from wellhead, to processing plants, to the supply lines that carry the gas.

But Only at New Facilities

The methane rules will only apply to “new and modified oil and gas production sources.” The White House’s plan will take the same noncommittal approach toward existing facilities it took in 2012 by simply setting standards for other pollutants that will cause an indirect reduction of methane.

“Failing to immediately regulate existing oil and gas equipment nationwide misses 90 percent of the methane pollution from the industry,” said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.

The White House has defended its focus on new facilities because “that’s where the investment is, that’s where the increases in emissions are coming from.”

How many processing facilities will be considered existing under Obama’s new rules? It is not immediately clear. What we do know is there are more than 500 gas processing plants and roughly 1.1 million active oil and gas wells. That’s a lot of methane.

Success Requires Other Agencies Step Up to the Plate

The White House has made it clear that in order to reach its lofty goal of reducing methane emissions by 45 percent in the next ten years, other agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration will have to do their part and introduce stricter standards of operation as well.

A Global Fight

Back in 2013 the United Nations organized a meeting of envoys from 190 nations to discuss a treaty aimed at cutting fossil-fuel emissions worldwide to advance the war on global warming. The talks focused on a “loss and damage” mechanism whose aim is to assist those developing nations that are coping with natural disasters, such as floods and erosion caused by higher temperatures.

With an all-hands-on-deck approach to global warming, the world is perhaps in a position to avoid many of the catastrophic levels of loss and damage that will occur should temperatures continue to rise. The loss and damage that will inevitably occur from the unavoidable temperature rise can be avoided if nations take effective adaptation measures in advance.

The problem is the amount of global adaptation has been so inadequate that there will no doubt be loss and damage in the future. And this loss and damage will solely be a result of human-induced climate change. How the world’s nations plan on dealing with this inevitable loss and damage will need to be further discussed in order to find a collaborative solution.

Featured photo courtesy of: Common Dreams

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