This morning, looking at my weekly feed on drug issues, noticed an article about Welsh police being given choice of whether or not to carry Naloxone.
Said article describes ‘..in a nutshell’, Naloxone’s purpose.
“..can reverse the effects of overdoses of drugs including heroin, fentanyl, and prescription painkillers..” (in overview, opioids) “…works by reversing the breathing difficulties that can be brought on by an overdose of these substances, buying time for an ambulance to arrive.”
However, police officer choice of whether or not to carry Naloxone has been criticised by some who contend that such N-carry (and training in the use of) should be mandatory in frontline public services.
Seems to me not unreasonable to have mandatory training in such things; and not unreasonable also, that the carrying of relevant first aid equipment should be based largely on operational requirements.
Reasonable choice is ok.
And also seems to me, that frontline public services such as the police, are overall much more likely to come across a cardiac arrest (for which mandatory vehicular carry of defibrillators is warranted) than an opioid overdose; so I think that police officers deciding whether or not to carry Naloxone will consider their particular operational context.
And that seems ok to me—Catch a Grip decision-making.
For I do not think that the whole community should be on perpetual alert—and carrying Naloxone—simply because a few folk refuse, for whatever reason, to control their drug use and go into self-inflicted overdose. These people are engaging in serious risky behaviour, so for their own good, need to stop rather than expecting the wider community (who are not directly engaged in their support) to look after them while they ‘wallow’ in running away from life’s challenges via errant drug use.
(And see Carrying Naloxone.)
Catch a Grip 