Naloxone can reverse an opioid overdose
Fentanyl, a potent opioid, has been found in all these substances:
- Counterfit Pills (Xanax, Hydrocodone, Oxycodone)
- Cocaine
- Methamphetamine
- Heroin
- Vaping products
Save a Life with Naloxone
Many have asked if a free prescription is legal. Dr. Lev chooses not to ask the question. Naloxone should be over the counter, and the FDA is working on such a solution. In the meantime people are dying.
The prescription concept stems from Dr. Lev’s experience in medical school when pharmaceutical companies gave out free prescription pads with pre-printed doctor’s name and directions for taking the specific opioid medication. No need for the doctor to cramp his/her fingers. Lev thought, if it worked for opioids – let’s do it for naloxone. There is a lot of potential hand cramping to explain naloxone directions.
Dr. Lev started giving prescriptions to people at conferences where she lectured. People would line to get one. Do you know who most frequented the line? Law enforcement agents. They felt they were at risk by handling drugs and wanted protection.
This led Dr. Lev to apply for a grant in San Diego to give out thousands of pre-printed prescriptions of naloxone to doctors all over the county. The project was a success. They ran out of prescriptions and there were no legal or fraud complaints. This website is recreating the San Diego project for everyone who needs naloxone.
There remains barriers for people to get naloxone. This is one solution. Saving even one person is worth the risk of making this prescription available to everyone.
The High Truths Mission
You may want to support the mission of High Truths – bringing relentless advocacy to unify addiction medicine with mental health and physical health. Dr. Lev fights for her patients in the hospital, and fights for Americans in their community. She thinks out of the box with programs such as:
- Free Naloxone prescriptions. We can’t wait for the FDA to come up with an over the counter solution – so download this solution.
- Increase Fentanyl testing to engage patients and the medical community in awareness and treatment. There is no FDA approved rapid urine multi-drug test that includes fentanyl. Dr. Lev and San Diego leaders wrote FDA and asked for emergency use for fentanyl. They did it for COVID, we should have it for Fentanyl. In the meantime, there are work around solutions for hospitals.
- Contact tracing for overdose clusters. Public health does tracing for food contamination and COVID. We can save lives with contact tracing for overdose clusters.
- Improve addiction treatment by elevating the bar for the profession. There are great addiction treatment programs out there, but unfortunately there is fraud. Voluntary consensus standards can improve treatment for everyone.
- We need a marijuana dashboard like we have for opioids. How many people are coming to emergency department for marijuana poisoning? How many with THC are admitted for psychiatric care? What is the medical examiner finding related to marijuana? Will it take 100 years to figure this out like it did for tobacco?
- Hollywood did so much for tobacco in terms of prevention and messages such as – do you want to kiss an ash tray? We need product placement on TV shows and Movies for addiction medicine, the dangers of sharing medications, and strong prevention and treatment modeling.
