THEO WELLING
Narcan is available at Walgreens, CVS and other drug stores without a prescription. St. Charles County first responders deployed the drug more than 4,300 times in the past five years.
New data compiled by the RFT shows that St. Charles County first responders have deployed on average more than 800 doses of Narcan per year for the past five years.
Narcan is an "opioid antagonist" nasal spray that reverses an opioid overdose. It stops the depression of respiratory function brought on by drugs such as Fentanyl and brings the overdosing person back to consciousness.
From 2017 to 2021, first responders in St. Charles County deployed at least 4,323 doses of Narcan. The St. Charles County Ambulance District deployed 3,869 of those doses. The remaining Narcan deployments in the county were administered by officers with the O'Fallon, St. Charles, Lake St. Louis and St. Peters police departments, as well as O'Fallon EMS. Some emergency services in St. Charles say they do not track Narcan deployments.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that last year saw more than 107,000 overdose deaths in the country, a record high. In Missouri, 2,202 individuals died from overdoses from December 2020 to December 2021, up 15 percent from the year before, according to the CDC.
The amount of Narcan deployed in St. Charles County from 2017 to 2021 is higher than the 4,323 doses tallied by the RFT, as that figure does not take into account entities that do not track Narcan usage. Nor does it include librarians, social workers, baristas, and other everyday Good Samaritans who have taken it upon themselves to carry the life saving drug.
Narcan is available at Walgreens, CVS and other pharmacies without a prescription.
Elsewhere in the region, the RFT reported in January that the City of St. Louis Fire Department deployed Narcan 10,249 times from the start of 2018 to the end of 2021.
