Another Overdose Victim Saved At Dublin Jail: The Case For Narcan

ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA — Another female inmate was saved at Dublin's Santa Rita Jail this week. The anti-overdose drug Narcan (naloxone) was administered Thursday evening to a woman who had overdosed on heroin after she made a court appearance, Alameda County sheriff's Sgt. Ray Kelly confirmed.

The woman, whose identity was not released, comes on the heels of yet another female inmate who was saved from an overdose death at the jail early Saturday morning after deputies and medical staff administered Narcan to her.

Both women were taken to local hospitals and are expected to survive.

"Every deputy in the department has been trained to administer Narcan," Kelly said, explaining that the opioid crisis has changed policing. "Our county has been flooded with fentanyl," which is being cut into other street drugs like heroin, Kelly said.

The drug is considered highly addictive and dangerous, and the market for it lucrative.

"Black-market fentanyl and other synthetic opioids smuggled in from Mexico and China have become the fastest-growing and most lethal drug in America, far surpassing heroin and the prescription narcotics that often serve as gateway drugs," The Washington Post reported this week.

It's not just drug users who are it risk. Two undercover Alameda County sheriff's investigators survived what could have been a fatal overdose of fentanyl following an accidental exposure while on duty last year. Narcan saved them.

The problem extends beyond local streets. Just this week, nine Americans were killed in an ambush south of the border. Mexican authorities say they were caught in the crossfire of rival drug cartels.

"What Mexico’s increasingly powerful transnational criminal organizations are battling over — and the reason gang warfare has reached record heights — is the opportunity to make enormous amounts of money trafficking fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the United States," The Washington Post report continued.

CDC data show that more than 399,000 people have died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999 to 2017.

In Alameda County, there were 676,436 opioid prescriptions written and 56 deaths due to all opioid-related overdoses in 2018, the most recent calendar year of data available, according to the California Department of Public Health.

"The problem has landed in our lap, and it's climbing," Kelly said.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Office currently has 1,000 doses of Narcan on hand. The intranasal antidote has been credited with saving approximately 20 lives — at least 12 were inmates — in Alameda County since the sheriff's office rolled out its anti-overdose program in early 2018, Kelly said.

The number doesn't include the many lives saved by other county first responders, such as paramedics.

"The jails are just a snapshot of what's happening out on the streets," Kelly said.

The Narcan program costs the county approximately $50,000 annually, which includes drug price and deputy training. Some of that cost is covered by grants, according to Kelly.

The county purchases Narcan at a bulk-rate discount, with a per unit cost for a 4 ml dose ranging between $13-$20, Kelly said. Narcan is even being handed out to Alameda County inmates when they leave jail. "We offer it to them, or they can request it," he said.

Kelly believes the ongoing expenditure is sustainable despite the ongoing opioid crisis.

"I don't think you can put a put a price on a life."