Thursday marks International Overdose Awareness Day, a yearly campaign to educate people on the effects of opioid overdoses and how to prevent them. As part of that, harm-reduction centers and recovery organizations in New Jersey are holding events to raise awareness about overdose prevention and how to use naloxone, the opioid reversal drug, often known as Narcan. Community advocates are holding training sessions to show people how to administer Narcan.
“We’ve had 50 years of the drug war, that has ripped people from their families, that has taken jobs and opportunity and money from people. And that has caused overdose deaths,” said Jenna Mellor, executive director of the New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition. “New Jersey as a state alone has invested over $1.6 billion year in the drug war. So we need the equivalent investments in harm reduction, in community care in, addressing the healing needed from the years and years of the drug war, and we need to stop treating people who use drugs as criminals and start investing in people who use drugs in our communities.”
On Thursday, the State Department of Health announced the eighth harm-reduction center, which will be run by the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey.
Earlier this year the state launched the Naloxone 365 program, which provides free anonymous access to naloxone at pharmacies.
“Overdoses continue to be a crisis in our country. And here in New Jersey we wanted to get out some of the biggest barriers to continual overdoses,” said Sarah Adelman, commissioner of New Jersey Department of Human Services. “And, that is getting the reversal drug into as many hands and medicine cabinet as possible.”
