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Moral of the story is only do drugs with people who’ll do the right thing(s) in a worst case scenario.
Good Samaritan laws are supposed to combat this, but even in some of those cases, there are still limitations and harsh strike systems. In the state of Ohio, for instance, immunity is only good for two overdoses and not available for people on parole. Also medical professionals can share the personal info of the OD’d person with law enforcement for further investigation and follow-up. It’s almost as if they drew up the bill and then were like, “nah, let’s just take out everything that actually has to do with the Good Samaritan concept.”
And it’s ridiculous that naloxone is so restricted in the UK. As an opioid antagonist, its only pharmacological action is to reverse opioid agonists (aka all of the opioids– heroin, fentanyl, oxy, etc). There is absolutely no way folks can even get high off of it. It’s simple to use (both the intranasal and intramuscular versions– one company here even makes them with vocal instructions now, although that one is mad expensive), and administration won’t negatively affect someone who doesn’t have opioids in their system. I really don’t know how the drug could be any safer.
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Out of the whole or Europe, only FI, DE and IE have Good Samaritan laws, in fact in DE it is illegal not to help someone who is in distress. But that can also include just calling 112 (equivalent of 999/911) and leaving things to the blue light services.
In my country (UK) there are occasions where if an Emergency Ambulance is called out to attend to suspected drugs users to certain areas (such as night time/music venues or urban housing estates (you may call these “projects” in USA) Police might turn up as well.
This varies from area to area, depends on the availability of both services (NHS do not delay the ambulance whilst waiting for cops) and does not happen every time. In UK calls to 999/112 are first answered by the telephone company (British Telecom + some others) and then passed on to the individual emergency service, they do not all go to the Police like in some other countries.
The Control Room can be set up so when the Ambulance unit is despatched that a separate callout is made for Police backup automatically for “high risk areas”. The paramedic crew can at any time also use their new digital radio equipment to contact the Police (some modern systems automatically send the GPS location of the Ambulance to the control room).
This tech is available in most European countries, I’m not sure how common it is for Ambulance and Police to turn up together outside the UK. However many European cops say that people should not be frightened to call 999/112 as provided the Ambulance crews are not being put in any danger they will leave them and the patients to do their work in peace.
To be fair the UK’s new approach to Naxolone is one of the most progressive in Europe (mainland Europe, even countries with supposedly more liberal attitudes like NL) still keeps it as a prescription only medicine) and previous UK laws were no different to existing global healthcare policies about classification of drugs.
Because the UK is 4 countries in one and each one has its own NHS, British healthcare policies are often more complex than they may seem at first glance and can look more restrictive than they actually are!
What some countries (which also have British style public healthcare systems) are also doing is to move some preparations of Naxolone from “POM” prescription only category to “P” (supervised pharmacy sales) – which makes perfect sense.
