Naloxbox, the Nox Box 🚫📦

Look, y'all…we love naloxone. We really do. Naloxone saves lives. Full stop. Reversing an opioid overdose with naloxone literally brings someone back from the dead. It is a miracle. Like vaccines for infectious disease, naloxone is a transformative leap in public health.

If you're working in this space, you likely know someone who is here today because of naloxone. This crisis has been horrible. It is difficult to fathom how much worse it would be without naloxone.

This is a lot of throat clearing to say: we support low-dose/low-cost naloxone being saturated in high-risk communities. It remains one of the best ways to drive our communities to zero overdose deaths and increase overall health and well-being.

But, as always, profiteers can’t resist cashing in during a crisis.

Yes, we're talking about communities spending settlement dollars on those little plastic boxes that don't even come with naloxone.

How much do those plastic boxes cost? Keep in mind, comparable metal AED cabinets cost ~$75 online. So for a plastic box it must be…

$5? $50? $150? Over $274?

Yes, you read that right.

Communities are spending opioid settlement dollars on a fancy wall-mounted plastic box. And it comes with no naloxone. And it is only for use indoors.

Buying these boxes is like buying a designer fire extinguisher case (sans extinguisher), calling the media, and holding a presser about the remarkable fire safety efforts in your community.

We have to ask, why is this level of waste ok for the opioid crisis?

NaloxBox: The $275 Nox Box 📦

Today, we're calling out spending opioid settlement money on branded naloxone storage that ships without naloxone.

Background

Let's start with what's actually happening here.