Kroger announces pharmacies to dispense Naloxone without prescription

FOUR THINGS TO KNOW

There will be 100 Kroger pharmacies on Monday across Southwest Ohio ready to dispense Naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, without a prescription.

Two days after the 84 pharmacies in Ohio and 16 in Northern Kentucky begins offering Naloxone, the number of Kroger pharmacies dispensing it will more than double Wednesday when 112 pharmacies in the Columbus area will begin offering the medicine.

Kroger’s Cincinnati/Dayton Division announced the decision Friday at its Oakley Kroger Market Place in Hamilton County with Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, joining company officials.

Kroger joins a list of pharmacies already offering Naloxone without a prescription. Community First Pharmacy in Hamilton started offering the drug in January after it received approval to dispense the opioid overdose reversal medicine. Earlier this month, CVS Health announced it would make the medicine available without a prescription at all CVS Pharmacy locations in Ohio beginning in late March.

“By increasing access to the life-saving drug Naloxone, we can bring more people back from the grips of overdoses,” said Portman. “This is an important step in our fight to combat addiction and we all need to continue to work from a bottom-up, comprehensive approach to the heroin epidemic.”

DeWine said 89 percent of the crime committed across the region and state “is a direct result of heroin and addictions.”

“Naloxone is really a miracle drug,” said DeWine, adding it’s also known as a “Lazarus drug.” “It really brings someone back from death. It does not always work, but it works an amazing number of times.”

For two years, the overdose antidote has established a record in Dayton and beyond.

By March 2014, kits with Naloxone were available in Miami Valley Hospital’s downtown emergency room and Samaritan Behavioral Health’s Crisis Care was giving families kits that included Naloxone.

The Montgomery County Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services agency was also distributing Naloxone kits to families with addicts by early 2014.

In September, the AIDS Resource Center Ohio Pharmacy in Dayton said it was dispensing Naloxone without a prescription to friends and relatives of people suffering addiction.

“We definitely support that for everybody with any involvement with a heroin addiction,” Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said Friday. “Narcan is definitely saving lives in this community.”

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Lori Erion, founding director of Families of Addicts, a support organization for families dealing with addiction, welcomed the news. She noted that DeWine’s office recently produced a video featuring two women — including a member of her own organization — discussing how Narcan has saved their lives.

Today, those women are leading happy, productive lives, Erion said.

“Everybody is worth saving,” she said. “Everybody is worth having a second, third, fourth chance. Because we never know when the light bulb is going to go off.”

Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said his county has one ZIP code that leads the state in the use of Narcan.

Last weekend, Clark County deputies were able to save two lives with the drug, Kelly said. Both of those people were in Bethel Twp., he said.

“It is good news,” Kelly said. “You’ve seen the numbers — 12,000 people in the state of Ohio were saved last year by this miracle drug. We put it in our patrol cars just a week ago.”

Ann Stevens, a spokeswoman for Montgomery County ADAMHS, noted that Kroger joins CVS Pharmacy in making the drug more readily available.

“ADAMHS couldn’t be more thrilled,” Stevens said. “That’s because the more chances there are to (use) this life-saving drug, the better.”

Drug overdose deaths in Ohio increased from 2,110 in 2013 to a record-high 2,482 in 2014, according to the state department of health. DeWine said between three to seven people a day are dying from overdoses of heroin and other drugs, and "if it was not for Naloxone, I bet that number would be doubled."

In Butler County, heroin and opioid overdoses in 2015 had more than 130 total drug overdoses, a record for the county. The county coroner’s office attributes 107 of those deaths as heroin-related.

“Unfortunately, Ohio and Kentucky rank in the top five when it comes to the highest overdose death rate according to the Centers for Disease Control,” said Jeff Talbot, vice president of merchandising for Kroger’s Cincinnati/Dayton division. “Kroger wants to help reverse this horrible statistic. We want families dealing with addiction to know that they can count on having this drug available in the event that they need it.”

Kroger worked with Dr. Shawn Ryan, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati, in developing a protocol and processes for dispensing Naloxone without a prescription in Ohio.

“It’s critical that pharmacists be able to educate families and friends of loved ones suffering from addiction on how to handle and administer Naloxone if needed,” Ryan said.

The announcement came just days after Ohio’s two U.S. senators, Portman and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sponsored legislation to combat the growing heroin crisis.

On Friday at the Oakley Kroger, Portman continued his push and talked about the heroin epidemic in Ohio and around the country.

“This is about saving lives here today, and that has to be where the focus is right now because we’re in a crisis,” Portman said. “If we don’t we’ll see more lives being snuffed out, dreams being lost, people not being able to achieve their God-given abilities.”

Critics of making Naloxone readily available to more people say it’s enabling drug addicts. Portman and DeWine disagree.

“This is not something that you can deal with overnight, but I think as a society in Ohio we’re starting to look at this much more holistically,” said DeWine. “There’s a lot of people out there that this has not only saved, but who went on and who are sober today.”

DeWine is not only encouraging fire departments carry Naloxone, but police officers as well.

“Kroger pharmacies will be helping to make a life-saving tool available to those who have a family member or someone close to them who suffers from an opiate addictions,” said DeWine, adding that heroin addiction can be up to a $1,500-a-day habit. “While many of our first responders carry Naloxone, having it available on a wider basis will no doubt help save lives.”

Staff writer Thomas Gnau contributed to this story.