From training thousands of students how to use injectable naloxone,Chloe Goodison has seen how daunting it can be for them to administer – even just when practising.
Students express worries that their hand will shake or they’ll forget the steps, fear of needles, or that they’ll do something wrong in administering the overdose prevention drug.
“They’ll turn to us and they’ll say, ‘I don’t think I would be able to do this in an emergency,'” said Goodison, founder of NaloxHome overdose prevention training.
Even though she has trained others on it countless times over the past four years, injectable naloxone is not what she would prefer to use either.
In her bag, she carries with her a small white nasal spray – a dose easily administered through someone’s nose to reverse an overdose.
Although nasal naloxone is free in Quebec, Ontario, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, most residents of B.C. have to pay – with B.C. pharmacies typically charging around $75 or 80 for a two-dose box.
“to me, it’s just worth it to have, even if it’s more expensive,” Goodison said.
“Nasal naloxone is so much easier to use.”
Politicians, experts, and harm reduction advocates are calling for nasal naloxone to be free for everyone in B.C. – as it is in other provinces – as they say providing a more accessible option for the general public could make a difference in saving lives amid the toxic drug crisis.
While the province has explored wider distribution of the spray for free as a pilot program, Health Minister Josie Osborne says it has not completed an evaluation of a pilot program that was scheduled to have been completed this summer.
the push for nasal naloxone to be free and widely available,like injectable naloxone,is accelerating following the fatal overdose of student Sidney McIntyre-Starko at the University of Victoria in January 2024.
Each floor of the University of Victoria’s student residences now has new signage and naloxone.(Emily Fagan/CBC)
Danya Fast, an assistant professor in the University of British Columbia who researches young people who use substances, says that while intramuscular naloxone is most useful for health-care workers and first responders, she sees the nasal spray as a more accessible tool for the general public.
“Having the nasal naloxone universally available to young people – and having all young people know what it is indeed, how to use it, when to use it, and what happens when you use it – would be a really critical life-saving step forward in this province,” she said.
Through a pilot program launched in May 2024, B.C. made a one-time public purchase of 60,000 nasal naloxone kits – paying about $123.50 per kit.
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British Columbia’s government continues to evaluate a pilot project aimed at increasing access to nasal naloxone, months after initially planning to complete the assessment. The delay leaves uncertain the future of making the life-saving medication free for the general public.
The province launched the pilot project in the spring of 2023, distributing nasal naloxone – a spray used to reverse opioid overdoses – through various community organizations and harm reduction sites. An evaluation was expected to be finished by fall 2023.
though, when asked in mid-November by CBC News, the minister said the evaluation is still “being completed” and did not say whether she would support making nasal naloxone free for the general public.
“Nasal naloxone has a really vital role to play,and it is indeed absolutely correct that it is easier for many people,” she said.
“I’ll have more to share about this soon.”
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control, which oversaw the pilot, said it is “a bit too early” to share data, and did not respond to further questions from CBC News.
Caroline McIntyre, an emergency physician whose daughter Sidney’s death from a fatal overdose prompted more calls for accessible nasal naloxone, says that her experiance with the pilot program showed it did not go far enough in providing take-home kits in areas where targeted populations, notably young people, need them most.