Sarnia's deputy police chief says naloxone has now become a part of a frontline officer's everyday first-aid toolkit.
The life-saving medication can reverse an overdose from opioids when given in time, and it comes in two forms: a prefilled nasal spray and injectable.
Deputy Chief Julie Craddock said police initially started carrying naloxone a couple of years ago to protect themselves and other officers if they came into contact with a harmful substance.
"What's happened [though] is that we're not seeing that," said Craddock. "Officers aren't needing to use it as a first-aid measure with each other, they're using it on members of the community that are suffering from addiction issues and the naloxone is being administered in order to save their lives."
During last month's police service board meeting, Craddock said the community has seen a real increase in opioid use over the last few years. She said they know from their police reporting system that they have 66 occurrences where naloxone was used.
"But we don't know if it was used by EMS, we don't know if it was used by a police officer, because it's just sort of in the narrative of the report," said Craddock. "So I've asked [the service] to create a mechanism in order to track the amount of naloxone so that we can get a little bit of a better picture of what that looks like in terms of a police response."
Craddock said we need to make naloxone and training are available to the public.
"Just like we teach people how to do CPR and first-aid, we need to teach people how to recognize the signs of addiction and a drug overdose," she said. "And we need to be able to make sure that enough people in the community have access to naloxone so that we can keep people alive so that maybe tomorrow's the day that they're able to get connected to the service that they need."
Craddock said some communities, not including Sarnia, have police distribute naloxone kits to vulnerable populations.
"Getting more naloxone out there is going to give people a chance to eventually, hopefully get some help and seek treatment," she said.
During last month's meeting, Craddock also highlighted a case from early April involving an unresponsive man in Veterans Park.
"The officer arrived and immediately identified this as being a medical condition from drug misuse," she said. "He administered a dose of naloxone in order to be able to get that male party some medical assistance until EMS arrived and was able to transport him to the hospital, and he did survive."
Lambton Public Health provides access to free nasal naloxone overdose prevention kits for any person at risk for opioid overdose, and family member, friend or other person able to help someone at risk of an opioid overdose.
For more details click here.
