Every day people die after overdosing on opioids, either it being opioid abuse or a prescription overdose. According to Luke Ramseth’s news article, “Utah pharmacies gave out thousands of opioid-combating naloxone doses without prescriptions last year. Health officials say it’s saving lives.”

A Utah order has allowed pharmacies to dispense the overdose treatment drug naloxone without needing a prescription. Having Narcan available without needing a prescription does save lives every day, but what it’s also doing is enabling an addiction. Drug users are going to start seeing this as a safety net and are going to start thinking that they can use drugs like heroine and be OK even if they overdose.

I think that if you have a prescription for opioids then you should be allowed to take home Narcan as well as a “just in case” because overdoses do happen by accident even if you don’t abuse drugs. I don’t think that making Narcan unavailable without prescription is the right thing to do because it is saving lives, but what we need is to find the in between so it isn’t just used as a safety net for drug abusers.

Justin Fornelius, North Salt Lake