You Can Finally Buy the Gadget That Reverses Drug Overdoses

It's a strange world indeed when anyone can buy a life-saving gadget at their local drug store, especially when the device is meant to save people from illegal substances. Yet that's the world we live in, starting this summer, when a newly approved gadget to treat opiate overdoses will be made available to anyone with a prescription, no medical skills necessary.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the device yesterday, making it the first automatic injector to reverse the effects of opiates, both street drugs like heroin and prescription meds like OxyContin, Vicodin, or morphine.

Called Evzio, the auto-injector works just like an EpiPen. It's designed to be very user-friendly so you don't need professional training to administer the treatment, just a prescription from your doctor. It injects a dose of naloxone, the opiate antidote used for decades to treat overdoses in ambulances and ERs.

With the Evzio device, which is a bit smaller than a deck of cards, a layperson can carry the handheld treatment around in their pocket or purse. The idea is to get it in the hands of friends and family of addicts—the people usually the first to find someone after they OD.

When you open up the kit, voice instructions walk you through how to use the device, even counting down from five before you inject it into the muscle, which can be done over clothing if necessary. It also comes with a "trainer" device for practice.

It stands to reason that the antidote to life-threatening drugs should be as easy to get your hands on as the drugs themselves. And though the FDA is starting to crack down on prescription opiates, it's been criticized in the past for approving the highly addictive drugs too easily, the New York Times reported. Facing that scrutiny and a growing prescription drug abuse epidemic, the FDA fast-tracked approval for the Evzio device.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if a DIY overdose treatment could wind up encouraging recreational drug use; if users know their friends have a naloxone pen on them, they could figure it's less risky to shoot up. James Rathmell, chief of the division of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital had the same thought. "I'm worried that there will be a false sense of security," he told the Times. "Like, 'O.K., I've got a naloxone pen, we can party all we want, no one is going to die."

But health care professionals and law enforcement are sure the gadget will save lives. In the US, drug overdoses now cause more deaths than car crashes, and more than half are from prescription drugs. Opiates alone were responsible for about 16,000 deaths a year, the Associated Press reported. That's one every half hour.

Overdoses cause respiratory depression—slow, shallow breathing that could eventually slow to a halt. Naloxone works by blocking the patient’s opioid receptors and reverses the effect of the drug, to keep the person breathing until they can get to the hospital.

The more people that have the antidote at the ready, the more fatal overdoses potentially prevented, officials figure. It's the same reason automatic external defibrillators are now available in public places like malls, airports, casinos, and churches, and can be used by a layperson. User-friendly devices are helping crowdsource emergency response, a strange new paradigm for medical care.