In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a decision to allow the sale of over-the-counter Narcan at pharmacies across the country. That decision will take effect later this month. The move comes as federal and state governments battle opioid overdose, an epidemic that took over 100,000 lives in 2021, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“For many years, our death rate has been lower in Wyoming than in other places,” said Kim Deti, the public information officer for the Wyoming Department of Health. Wyoming has been in the process of distributing Narcan to police, EMTs, and a number of private organizations that request the drug for years prior. However, it hasn’t been available over-the-counter. The epidemic has become more of a concern to Wyoming officials.
According to an investigation by WyoFile, police seized over 13,000 units of fentanyl in 2022, up from only 1,600 units in 2020.
Officials from both the state and federal levels are hoping that the FDA decision will help increase access to the life-saving overdose-reversal drug known as Narcan. Deti emphasized that while the Department of Health helps groups and organizations, this decision may help individuals who need it.
“I think it seems pretty obvious that the federal government, including the FDA, would like to make access to those potentially life-saving drugs more widely available for those individuals,” says Deti.
Wyoming currently has no plans to mandate on-hand supplies of over-the-counter Narcan as opposed to other city and state mandates. It is still expected that many Wyoming pharmacies and organizations will request the drug once it becomes widely available.
As for the cost, the Wyoming Department of Health is still looking into how that may affect communities and ways to assist with that need. According to Deti: “That is one of those things we are looking at...ways we can maybe reduce the price as a barrier or obstacle. We don’t have a plan on it yet…It is a little too early for us to say how that will work and what the future availability will be like, but in the meantime, we’re going to provide it to the groups and agencies across the state.”
