It’s not very often that people who work to prevent overdose deaths get excited about something truly groundbreaking. It’s not often we get to point to something that could actually play a significant role in helping to end our country’s rapidly escalating overdose crisis. But Thursday we did.

Thursday, the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) concluded that expanded access to a generic drug called naloxone could play a role in helping to reduce opioid overdose fatalities. The research, led by the Harm Reduction Coalition, reveals that over the past 15 years, an estimated 10,000 opiate overdoses have been successfully reversed with naloxone by people present at the scene of an overdose.

With all the media around the death of Whitney Houston, many people have been talking about the tragedy of accidental drug overdose and wishing for more proven, cost-effective ways to prevent it. While we won’t know for a while what caused Houston’s death, we do know, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the type of drug most likely to be involved in a fatal drug overdose in the US is a prescription opioid painkiller, like oxycodone.

Naloxone hydrochloride (also called Narcan), is a generic, relatively […]