Common rooms in Allegheny dorms should be stocked with common anti-overdose tools such as Naloxone, often known by the brand name of Narcan. The low cost and ease of use — as well as potentially life-saving effects in the event of an emergency — should make stocking an anti-opioid drug in common rooms as an easily accessible precaution a no-brainer.
Potential questions or worries could arise: why Naloxone? Couldn’t someone hurt themselves? Won’t this encourage potentially dangerous drug use on campus? What would this cost?
From the top: Naloxone is the most useful and intuitive option to select to stock, in its Narcan form, due to its wide use cases and ease of access. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on overdoses in 2023, 81.8% of deaths due to fatal overdoses occurred solely due to an opioid or a stimulant paired with an opioid (SUDORS Dashboard: Fatal Drug Overdose Data – Accessible Version). In other words — just over four in five fatal overdoses could be aided or stymied by the presence of Naloxone.
Could someone hurt themselves with Narcan? Not realistically, unless they were en route to injuring themselves in another manner. Narcan, the nose-spray version of the drug Naloxone, has no needles or sharp objects. The side effects are mild in the vast majority of cases. While naloxone hypersensitivity presenting in allergy form is a possibility, this triggering from the administration of anti-overdose drugs has not been proven or convincingly demonstrated, according to Dr. Eric Macy of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. It is not really possible for someone to do significant damage to themselves without a significant amount of effort and determination.
What would this cost? Couldn’t this be prohibitive or raise fees for students?
Short answer: No. In the Meadville CVS on North Main Street, two doses of Narcan cost $40 plus tax. Let’s assume that each common room/area receives one box at the start of each semester and that the college is somehow paying CVS prices for every single box. Let’s also assume every single box gets used every semester, even though Narcan has a 36-month shelf life and it is incredibly unlikely that most boxes will be used. In total, rounding up, that is 81 dollars per common room per year (accounting for both semesters). Going off of the publicly available — and mostly entirely unlabelled — floor plans for each building, I identified 32 likely common room locations, which multiplied by the cost of 81 per, would be $2,592 per year. Considering ASG failed to spend a quarter of a million dollars last year — over 96 times that amount — and was forced to surrender it to the college so that it would finally be used to improve student life, the argument of cost should not be an impediment or reasonable opposition.
Finally, a common opposition to Narcan or anti-overdose distribution is that harm prevention policies will inspire increased use of harmful drugs based on the idea that hard drug users will do more drugs with access to harm reduction policies. This is simply not true, and increased drug use alongside the opening of harm reduction centers has not been proven. As well, Narcan has no potential for itself to be used in an abusive manner and is solely effective for overdoses.
Does placing Narcan in public areas have precedent? Is it tried and true? Yes and yes. Several states and education systems have created harm reduction policies centered around Naloxone. Washington state passed a law requiring all residence halls with a population of more than 100 students to stock Naloxone and train staff on its administration — 11 of 34 community colleges in Washington state fall under such a jurisdiction, according to an article by Charlotte West — which is a step beyond even what I propose. January of 2020 saw Pennsylvania’s governor at the time award almost one million dollars in grants to, in part, create Naloxone training opportunities, showing that in this state, there is precedent for 13 higher education institutions before Allegheny. All 50 states as well as the District of Columbia have implemented some form of good samaritan or access law to give broad liability protection to those administering Naloxone, regardless of training or certification.
Drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States, and 18-25 year olds are the largest category of age to potentially abuse opioids, according to the CDC. Pennsylvania is an unfortunate leader in opioid death rates, ranking at ninth in the nation as of 2024 according to the World Population Review’s state-by-state assessment. The intention of this piece is not to fearmonger the dangers of recreational drugs, or to promote their use, or to condemn those who would fall victim to opioid addiction or the abuse of their nature. The suggestion of strong, proactive solutions being provided is what will build a healthier community and provide a potential second chance at life for those who could ever need aid and help.
Naloxone is effective, simple to use and cannot harm someone if they are overdosing on a drug other than opioids or a combination involving opioids, making using it better than not using it in all overdose cases. Naloxone can reverse or pause the effects of an opioid-related overdose in minutes, though calling 911 will still be required regardless.
Finally, I expect that students who were present at this time last year will be expecting many emotive and mournful words on the unfortunate accidental overdose involving several over-the-counter substances that occured last September: However, I will not dredge up a friend for pathos. I will say, however: It has been a year. It’s time to take proactive measures, rather than merely express sorrow when it happens again and do nothing else.
I do hope some at ASG or the college proper will take these words and put them into action. The solution I offer is not expensive, it is not complicated and it has been proven to be effective on over a dozen campuses across the nation. It does not pose any major health risks for the vast majority of the population, and any student or faculty can learn to use it by reading the box. For each common room in traditional residence halls, one box per year to begin. That is my proposal.