The CVS drug store chain will carry the heroin overdose antidote naloxone at its Ohio stores. Kevin Niedermier of member station WKSU in Kent reports.
In recent years police and EMS crews have carried naloxone to administer to people overdosing from heroin or other opiates. Last year Governor John Kasich signed a law to make the antidote more easily available in Ohio without a prescription. Bill Denihan is CEO of the Cuyahoga County Board of Alcohol, Drug Addition and Mental Health. He praises the increased availability:
"We've already saved well over 100 people in the last year and a half with naloxone. So the more it gets into distribution, be it CVS or any other way, is good, because it will eventually be used to save someone and reverse the overdose from heroin."
Denihan says between 2013 and October of last year nearly 600 people in Cuyahoga County died from heroin overdoses.