DRUG USED TO HALT OVERDOSE DEBATED

Heroin Deaths

PHILADELPHIA -- In the wake of more than 400 deaths nationwide from
heroin laced with the painkiller fentanyl, some needle-exchange
programs are giving addicts prescriptions for a drug to keep on hand
to halt an overdose. The antidote -- naloxone, which is sold under
the brand name Narcan -- can save the life of someone who might not
call 911 for fear of prosecution, treatment providers say.

"If people have to rely on paramedics, more often than not, the
overdose is going to be fatal, just because of the amount of time for
people to get there," said Casey Cook, executive director of
Prevention Point Philadelphia, a nonprofit that runs the city's
needle-exchange program. The group recently began distributing
naloxone prescriptions through a physician.

But others say naloxone is best administered by trained paramedics
and that the prescription approach might appear to condone drug use.

"We don't want to send the message out that there is a safe way to
use heroin," said Jennifer DeVallance, a spokeswoman for the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which sponsored a
symposium Friday on the fentanyl problem in Philadelphia.

Fentanyl -- an opiate used legally in anesthesia and for some cancer
patients -- is cheaper than heroin and 80 times more potent than
morphine. At least 150 fentanyl deaths have been recorded in the
Philadelphia area, 130 in Chicago and 130 in Detroit.

Fentanyl can lead to respiratory failure so quickly that one addict
in Philadelphia apparently died even before he finished shooting up.
A syringe with some heroin still in it was in his arm when paramedics
found his body, said Capt. Richard Bossert, of Philadelphia's
Emergency Medical Services Administration. Bossert said his unit has
answered dozens of calls but has saved only two people. "In other
years, we were getting them (non-fentanyl heroin overdoses) to the
hospital and they survived," Bossert said.