Letter: Reduce SC drug deaths with overdose prevention act

It is hard to write about the drug addicts in my life, and even harder to write about the ones who are gone. I could try to elicit tears for the boys and girls whose funeral announcements caught us all off guard. Or I could be light-hearted and make a goofy analogy about how drug addicts are like a grocery cart with a broken wheel, always veering off course to wreck itself into pyramids of canned soup. But many of us already know an addict and understand the devastation and destructive behavior, so it is better to be simple and frank: This generation is being ravaged by opiate addiction, but now there is a possibility that we can do something about it in South Carolina.

A bill called the Overdose Prevention Act, H.3083, is before the S.C. House Judiciary Committee. It would provide at-risk users and first responders with training about overdose prevention and access to an opioid antidote such as naxalone, which reverses the effect of opiates, preventing overdose. The bill also would grant medical amnesty to anyone reporting an overdose.

Naxalone is a proven life safer with no abuse potential. According to the World Health Organization, overdose deaths fell by 50 percent in one trial that gave naxalone kits to a population at high risk of overdose. The experience of Massachusetts and North Carolina, which have similar laws in place, proves that this harm-reduction approach is effective in combating drug overdose.

The opiate drug epidemic has killed three times as many people as the Vietnam War, annually kills more than guns and has caused the death rate among white women ages 15-54 to spike. This drug wave has hit every state and has mostly targeted a suburban middle-class demographic that long thought itself immune to such things.

Law enforcement, rehabilitation and robust tracking of opiate prescriptions is essential, but not enough. A harm-reduction strategy to keep people alive long enough to recover must be the state’s highest priority. The dead do not overcome their addictions and do not get the chance to turn their lives around.

Please contact your state legislators and urge them to support the Overdose Prevention Act.

Mount Pleasant

This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Letter: Reduce SC drug deaths with overdose prevention act."