Pa. Police Chief Concerned Over Naloxone

Sept. 07--Berks County, Pa.

Three times in the past two years, heroin or fentanyl abusers have overdosed at a convenience store in the jurisdiction of the Northern Berks Regional Police Department.

Each time, ambulance personnel handled the emergency. No police had to administer medicine.

Those scenarios have added to the reluctance of Northern Berks Chief Scott Eaken to equip his officers with naloxone, a prescription drug that can reverse the effects of overdoses of opiates like heroin and fentanyl.

"Medical people who are used to administering medicine to individuals are the people who should be doing it, rather than police officers," said Eaken, who is president of the Berks County Chiefs of Police Association.

Naloxone has grabbed the spotlight in the midst of an opiate overdose crisis. Deaths from heroin have increased sharply, with 18 fatalities in Berks County alone this year.

Other opiate abuse-fighting initiatives are underway.

The Council on Chemical Abuse recently received a grant of about $100,000 to build a "warm handoff" program to transition overdose survivors into addiction treatment. State leaders have proposed increases in treatment funding. And, the Obama administration launched a new push against heroin and opiate trafficking.

But naloxone's track record of saving lives has given it extra prominence.

A law passed last year increased its availability to first responders, and last week the state announced that police carrying naloxone had logged 300 "reversals" of opiate overdoses.

In the past year in Reading, 150 reversals of opiate overdoses using naloxone were carried out by Reading Fire Department EMS personnel, Deputy Fire Chief James Conrad said.

Naloxone has been carried on advanced life support ambulance units for decades, Conrad said. Because of the new law, Reading firefighters recently completed training in the use of naloxone and now have it on all firetrucks.

City police, though, do not carry it because EMS personnel and firefighters are already equipped, Police Chief William M. Heim said.

Kutztown is the only local police department in Berks with naloxone. District Attorney John T. Adams said as many as 12 other departments have agreed to carry it.

Eaken does not expect Northern Berks to be one of them. Experience, he said, has shown that ambulance personnel can handle such situations.

Also, he said, the medicine is temperature-sensitive and has an expiration date, and keeping it on hand would create additional logistical work.

Adams said he could not mandate that local police carry naloxone.

"If they choose, I will make it available to them," he said.

In Berks, members of the public concerned about opiate overdoses got a unique opportunity on Tuesday when the Council on Chemical Abuse announced it would distribute free heroin overdose kits containing naloxone.

Police departments were able to acquire naloxone because Pennsylvania Physician General Dr. Rachel L. Levine wrote a standing order in April that served as a prescription covering purchase by all first responders. Berks residents coming to the council will be able to get naloxone because the agency acquired a standing order from a local physician, Dr. William L. Santoro, an addiction specialist at Reading Health System.

The council's move to have a doctor write a prescription for a large group of people may be without precedent, according to Pennsylvania Medical Society spokesman Charles Moran.

"I think it is very unique," he said. "I can't think of anything in the last 15 years where somebody has said, 'Here is a blanket prescription.'"

Santoro called the medicine very safe and said the standing order he wrote in early June stipulates that a person taking possession of naloxone must get training beforehand.

"There are no side effects to the medicine," he said. "I am not aware of any drug-drug interactions."

A program analyst at the council, Kathy Noll, said more than a dozen people had expressed interest in the kits.

Meanwhile, the agency has received a grant of about $100,000 from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency that will allow it to start a system for giving more help to people who survive opiate overdoses.

Noll said certified recovery specialists will try to connect with overdose survivors while they are still in the hospital -- and before they have the chance to return to addiction-governed lifestyles.

Adams said he plans to support the program.

Linda Texter, director of the drug and alcohol center at Reading Hospital, said that under current procedures, an opiate overdose survivor who has received emergency treatment has the opportunity to talk to a social worker. The patient is assessed for possible immediate entry into longer-term treatment, she said.

Contact Ford Turner: 610-371-5037 or fturner@readingeagle.com.

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