Concord police to get lifesaving drug for people overdosing on opioids

Concord police officers are getting supplies of a drug that can help save the lives of people overdosing on opioids.

Concord City Council is letting Police Chief Gary Gacek spend about $7,000 to equip more than 125 officers with the drug naloxone, the (Concord) Independent Tribune reported on Wednesday. Naloxone blocks or reverses the effects of opioids.

Concord police join Cabarrus County EMS, the Concord Fire Department and numerous other police, EMS and fire departments and sheriff’s offices in the Charlotte region already administering naloxone.

Overdoses kill more than 1,000 people a year in North Carolina, about a 75 percent jump in the state’s drug death rate since 2002, which experts largely attribute to opioids, The Charlotte Observer has reported. Nearly half the overdose deaths involve prescriptions filled within 60 days of the victim’s death, according to a 2014 state report.

In 2015 alone, Cabarrus County doctors wrote 193,000 prescriptions for opioids, equaling about 12 million pills, Gacek told city council members at their recent retreat, according to the Independent Tribune.

“It’s those opioid pills that are the gateway to abuse, misuse, addiction,” Gacek said.

In 2015, Naloxone was administered over 300 times to people overdosing on opioids in Cabarrus County, including about 160 patients in Concord, Gacek said, according to the newspaper.

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 8:47 PM with the headline "Concord police to get lifesaving drug for people overdosing on opioids."