May 11, 2015 3 min read

Heroin has become increasingly cheap, increasingly powerful and, as a result, increasingly deadly.

In 2013, more than 2,000 people died of drug overdoses in Pennsylvania. While it was at epidemic proportions a couple of years ago, the abuse of prescription drugs leveled off, thanks in part to heightened awareness and tightened controls. But the use of heroin escalated. The rate of overdose deaths grew threefold nationwide from 2010 to 2013, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This newspaper, along with others in the region, published all too many obituaries over the last few years for people who died in the prime of life, and it’s a good bet heroin claimed a good portion of them.

For that reason, we applaud the pilot program by Canonsburg’s police department to have its officers carry a heroin antidote nasal spray in their vehicles so they can quickly respond if they are summoned to a location where someone overdosed on heroin or some other opioid. Canonsburg is the first municipality in either Washington or Greene counties to equip its officers with Narcan, which is held in a simple, pen-like device. If used rapidly enough, it can reel someone back from the brink of death by blocking the absorption of opioids by the brain.

The Pennsylvania State Police are already carrying the antidote, and, in April, Gov. Tom Wolf issued an order that made Narcan available from pharmacies without a prescription. We hope other police departments in both Washington and Greene counties follow Canonsburg’s example, and make haste in doing so. Lives could be hanging in the balance.

In a story that appeared Saturday in the Observer-Reporter, Dr. Mitch West, who is the co-director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, said some police departments were reluctant to carry Narcan because they believe having a handy antidote available might only encourage addicts to continue down their deadly path. But, as West explained, that’s ridiculous. The pull of heroin is so strong its users will likely keep on using it and believing overdoses happen to somebody else.

“Does anyone drive more recklessly when you wear a seat belt?” West asked. “Do you act more recklessly because you have health insurance, or do instances of sex increase because there are contraceptives? No. You just stop the results. Here, we’re stopping fatalities.”

First responders in West Virginia, which is entrenched in a similarly pitched battle against heroin – the Mountain State had the highest overdose mortality rate in the nation in 2013 – are also now allowed to carry Narcan following the approval of a bill by lawmakers in March.

There’s been a growing realization the way to stop the abuse of illegal drugs is not the incarceration of users, but treatment so they can break the habit, and education so others don’t become hooked. But no amount of treatment can work for a heroin user who dies as a result of their addiction.

Having police officers and other first responders carry Narcan isn’t a way to make the use of heroin consequence-free, but a simple acknowledgement of heroin’s dark reality, and the need for there to be fewer casualties mourned by friends and family, and fewer obituaries filling this and other newspapers.