Pharmacies assess the hurdles of distribution
Local pharmacies are key in this chain, but the overdose antidote is new territory for many pharmacists, said Randy Hitchens, the executive vice president of the Indiana Pharmacists Alliance. He said in 2015, when Adams began his push to get naloxone into the hands of drug users and their families, only one or two retail pharmacies carried it.
“This has always been an emergency room drug. Retail pharmacists typically were not used to dealing with [it],” Mr. Hitchens said. “A lot were probably saying, ‘What in the devil is naloxone?’”
Today, he estimates 60%-70% of Indiana’s more than 1,100 retail pharmacies carry the drug. Walgreens has committed to stocking Narcan.
Access, though, is always subject to retail pressures.
“If pharmacies are not seeing a steady stream coming in asking for it, they won’t be incentivized to carry it on their shelves,” said Daniel Raymond, the deputy director of policy and planning for the Harm Reduction Coalition.
A patchwork of other decentralized sources for naloxone exist: syringe-exchange vans, county and state health departments, churches and community centers, all trying to find ways to get overdose medication into the hands of people who need it.
That supply stream “meets people where they are,” Mr. Raymond said, but those little programs don’t have the muscle to negotiate discounted prices.
“Individual health programs are trying to navigate the crisis on their own, but when you see … growing demand and limited supply, it’s a role for federal intervention,” Mr. Raymond said.
He’d like to see the federal government step in to negotiate prices where smaller programs can’t.