This morning, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration has finally approved the overdose antidote naloxone without a prescription. I have been urging the FDA to make naloxone over the counter for years. Cato adjunct scholar David Hyman and I gave a Hill Briefing on this issue in October 2019. By late 2022 the FDA signaled it might finally happen, perhaps as early as March 2023.
This decision will make it much easier for harm reduction organizations to obtain and distribute the overdose antidote to people who use drugs. It will also make it easier for people who use drugs (licit or illicit) and those who care about them to purchase the antidote discreetly, avoiding the stigma attached to opioid use these days.
Emergent Biosolutions, the maker of Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray, hopes to have the product on the shelves by late summer. This is the first of what may be several brands of naloxone to be soon sold over the counter. Hopefully, the drug will be available in convenience stores and vending machines before long.
As Michael F. Cannon and I point out in our white paper, the prices of prescription drugs commonly fall once they become available over the counter. When the FDA allows other brands of naloxone to be sold over the counter, the competition thus generated may also cause prices to drop.
All of this is good news for medical and non-medical users of opioids and their friends and loved ones.
Featured Study
Drug Reformation: End Governments Power to Require Prescriptions
U.S. law grants the Food and Drug Administration the power to make consumers get a prescription before purchasing certain drugs. The rationale behind government‐imposed prescription requirements is consumer safety—that is, the idea that some drugs are too dangerous for consumers to use without physician supervision.
