It was during a work trip to the San Diego area when Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian realized the full harm reduction potential of having a free Narcan vending machine at a jail.
A corrections officer there demonstrated how visitors to the facility could use the self-serve machine to obtain free doses of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone. And when the machine dispensed the kit, the officer turned to everyone observing and, rather than return the kit to the machine to be distributed outside the demo, casually asked, “Does anyone want this?”
When someone took the officer up on the offer, Koutoujian said, it drove home the difference between Narcan being available for someone to go out and buy on their own (it retails for about $23 a dose at CVS) and having that potentially life-saving medication be offered for free to anyone who is interested.
And that experience led Koutoujian to have a similar free naloxone vending machine installed last month at the visitor’s center of the Middlesex Jail & House of Correction in Billerica. It has been used nearly 30 times by visitors and staff since, he said, and a second machine is already being planned.
“It’s important to have these kits in the community where they can do good. Oftentimes there might be people who might know they have a greater need for these kits in their lives for various reasons, they have family members who struggle with substance use disorder. But I realized as a citizen it would be important for me to have something, should I come across a situation,” Koutoujian said. “The greater access to this, the more lives that can be saved.”
There were 2,125 confirmed and estimated opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2023, or 30.2 per 100,000 residents. That marked a 10 percent decline compared to 2022, when the epidemic claimed the lives of 2,357 Bay Staters, at a rate of 33.5 per 100,000. Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein attributed the decline…