Naloxone access and racial injustice - Comments during FDA-RUF meeting March 2022

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  • April 8, 2022
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  • It's 2022. We can't have a serious conversation about drugs in America without talking about race. In California, in 2018 Black overdose mortality overtook that of White individuals. That was 4 years ago. Native Americans have had the highest overdose death rates for many years longer, a fact that is nearly never mentioned. The greatest increases in overdose death rates are happening in communities of color. Yet, harm reduction programs serving these communities are less likely to have a physician who can order naloxone for them. Many of the groups that approach Remedy Alliance Buyers Club are small organizations that attend to health disparities and civil rights more broadly, like diabetes and contaminated water, voting and incarceration. Often times the groups are run by young community organizers. Due to generational hostility and harassment encountered in the healthcare system, these groups are very understandably reluctant to waste time begging doctors to purchase naloxone for them – they usually get turned down. This is a structural problem, a generational problem. In fact, you likely won’t even know these groups exist, they aren’t sought out for meetings like this. Many of these groups don’t know they have any pathway to obtaining naloxone. It’s 2022, we cannot waive away their non-participation as an unintended consequence, like we expect them to do ALL the work. If we honestly want to dismantle structures of injustice, we have to make it easy for them to get naloxone and pay their outreach workers, and then WE need to step out of the way.
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  • Naloxone Access: Answering Questions Virtual Public Meeting
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