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Newspaper boxes being used to distribute overdose reversal drug [Video]
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Newspaper boxes being used to distribute overdose reversal drug [Video]

For decades, Jeff Card’s family company was known for manufacturing the once ubiquitous tin boxes where people could buy newspapers on the street.Today, reach into one of his containers and you may find something entirely different and free of charge: Naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug. Naloxone distribution containers have been proliferating across the country in the more than a year since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its sale without a prescription. Naloxone, a nasal spray most commonly known as Narcan, is used as an emergency treatment to reverse drug overdoses.Related video above: In some states, like Maryland, vending machines that are intended to save lives have been installed in recent yearsSuch boxes appearing in neighborhoods, in front of hospitals, health departments and convenience stores are one way those supporting people with substance use disorder have sought to make Narcan, which can cost around $50 over the counter, accessible to those who need it most. Not unlike little free libraries that distribute books to anyone who wants one, the metal boxes used formerly as newspaper receptacles aren’t locked and don’t require payment. People can take as much as they think they need.Advocates say the containers help normalize the medication and are evidence of steadily reducing stigma around its use. Sixty Narcan receptacles were distributed across 35 states in honor of Thursday’s “Save a Life Day” a naloxone distribution and education event started by a West Virginia nonprofit in 2020. Containers were purchased from Card’s Texas-based Mechanism Exchange & Repair, which still serves newspaper customers but has expanded to manufacturing other products amid the newspaper industry’s decline.”It’s fortunate and unfortunate,” said Card, who started making the Narcan containers over two years ago. “Fortunate for us that we’ve got something to build, but unfortunate that this is what we have to build, given how bad the drug problem is in America.” Opioid deaths were already at record levels before the coronavirus pandemic, but they skyrocketed when it hit in early 2020. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were about 85,000 opioid-related deaths in the 12 months that ended in April 2023. But since then, they fell. The CDC estimate for the 12 months that ended in April 2024 was 75,000 — still higher than any point before the pandemic.The reasons for the decline are not fully understood. But it does coincide with Narcan, a medication that’s been hard to get in some communities, becoming available over the counter, as well as with the ramping up of spending of funds from legal settlements between governments and drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved use of Narcan to treat overdoses back in 1971, but its use was confined to paramedics and hospitals for decades. Narcan nasal spray was first approved by the FDA in 2015 as a prescription drug, and in March, it was approved for over-the-counter sales and started being available last September at major pharmacies. “That took the barriers away. And that’s when we realized, ‘OK, now we need to increase access. How can we get naloxone into the communities?'” said Caroline Wilson, a West Virginia social worker and person in recovery who coordinated this year’s Save a Life Day.Last year, all 13 states in Appalachia participated in the day spearheaded by West Virginia nonprofit Solutions Oriented Addiction Response. Community organizations in hundreds of counties table in parking lots, outside churches and clinics handing out Narcan and fentanyl test strips and training people on how to use it. They also work to educate the public on myths surrounding the medication, including that it’s unsafe to have in easily accessible places. Narcan has no effect on people who use it without opioids in their system. This year, with the effort expanding to 35 states and a theme of “naloxone everywhere”, the group sent out 2,000 emergency kits containing one Narcan dose to be placed in locations like convenience store bathrooms or parks. The 60 tin newspaper boxes which sell for around $350 apiece were purchased with grants. Related video below: Milwaukee recently added new harm reduction vending machinesAonya Kendrick Barnett’s harm reduction coalition Safe Streets Wichita installed one of the Kansas’ first Narcan receptacles which she refers to as “nalox-boxes” in February. The boxes, now sold by a few different companies, can look different, too. Some look like newspaper boxes, while others look like vending machines. Since installing a vending machine Narcan container which just requires a zip code be entered on the keypad to access the medication it’s distributed around 2,600 packages a month. “To say, ‘Hey, we have a 24-hour vending machine, come over here and come get what you need no judgment,’ is so bold in this Bible belt state and it’s helping me break down the the stigma,” she said. Kendrick Barnett said there’s no place for judgment when it comes to what she calls live-saving health care: “People are going to use drugs. It’s not our job to condemn or condone it. It’s our job to make sure that they have the necessary health care that they need to survive.”The Save a Life Day box her organization received is going to go in front of their new clinic, scheduled to open in October. In Erie, Pennsylvania, 74-year-old stained glass artist Larry Tuite said he grew concerned seeing overdoses increasing in his city. He began leaving Narcan packages on the windowsills of 24-hour markets in town that sell products like pipes and rolling papers. He was shocked at how quickly they disappeared. “As many as I give out, I run through them really quickly,” said Tuite, who keeps cases of the drugs stacked along the walls of his studio apartment.The Save a Life Day container, which he got permission to put outside one such store, has helped him to disperse even more Narcan. At least a dozen people have been saved by the medication he’s distributed, he said. Tasha Withrow, a person in recovery who runs a harm reduction coalition based out of Putnam County, West Virginia, said Narcan wasn’t something she ever had access to when she was using opioids. “People can just reach in and grab what they need we didn’t have that back then,” she said, while stocking a container in a residential neighborhood earlier this week. “To actually see that there is some access now I’m glad that we’ve at least moved forward a little bit in that direction.” ___AP journalist Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.

10 homes have collapsed into the Carolina surf. Their destruction was decades in the making [Video]
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10 homes have collapsed into the Carolina surf. Their destruction was decades in the making [Video]

A slow-motion catastrophe has been playing out in the coastal North Carolina village of Rodanthe, where 10 houses have fallen into the Atlantic since 2020. Three have been lost since Friday.The most recent collapse was Tuesday afternoon, when the wooden pilings of a home nicknamed Front Row Seats” buckled in the surf. The structure bumped against another house before it bobbed in the waves, prompting now familiar warnings about splintered wood and nail-riddled debris.The destruction was decades in the making as beach erosion and climate change slowly edged the Atlantic closer to homes in the somewhat out-of-the way vacation spot. The threat is more insidious than a hurricane, while the possible solutions won’t be easy or cheap, either in Rodanthe or other parts of the U.S.Barrier islands aren’t ideal for buildingRodanthe is a village of about 200 people on the Outer Banks, a strip of narrow barrier islands that protrude into the Atlantic like a flexed arm.Barrier islands were never an ideal place for development, according to experts. They typically form as waves deposit sediment off the mainland. And they move based on weather patterns and other ocean forces. Some even disappear.David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, along which Rodanthe is located, said it was more common in previous decades for homeowners to move their houses from the encroaching surf.Perhaps it was more well understood in the past that the barrier island was dynamic, that it was moving, Hallac said. And if you built something on the beachfront it may not be there forever or it may need to be moved.The beach is rapidly erodingRodanthe is one of many communities on Hatteras Island, which is roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) long and has been experiencing beach erosion for decades.The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was 1,500 feet (457 meters) from the ocean when it was built in 1870, Hallac said. By 1919, the Atlantic was 300 feet away. The lighthouse was later moved to a more protected location.The erosion has been measured to be as much as 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) a year or more in some places.And so every year, 10 to 15 feet of that white sandy beach is gone, Hallac said. And then the dunes and then the back-dune area. And then all of a sudden, the foreshore, that area between low water and high water, is right up next to somebody’s backyard. And then the erosion continues.Like a toothpick into wet sandOcean waves eventually lap at the wooden pilings that hold up the beach houses. The supports could be 15 feet deep. But the surf slowly takes away the sand that is packed around them.It’s like a toothpick in wet sand or even a beach umbrella, Hallac said. The deeper you put it, the more likely it is to stand up straight and resist leaning over. But if you only put it down a few inches, it doesnt take much wind for that umbrella to start leaning. And it starts to tip over.A single home collapse can shed debris up to fifteen miles along the coast, according to an August report from a group of federal, state and local officials who are studying threatened oceanfront structures in North Carolina. Collapses can injure beachgoers and lead to potential contamination from septic tanks, among other environmental concerns.Collapsed houses were likely in complianceRules that govern coastal development in North Carolina have been in place since the 1970s, before many of the collapsed houses were constructed and when there was a lot more beach, said Noah Gillam, Dare County’s planning director.At the time they were built, they were likely in compliance with all of the set-back requirements,” Gillam said. “And they were set back, in many situations, hundreds of yards from the dune line, let alone the ocean.”Since then, the rate of erosion has sped up, swallowing swaths of sand. Storms also have become more frequent and more intense, pounding the shoreline of a community that is acutely exposed to the ocean.This is a national issueMeanwhile, officials and experts have been focused on solutions or at least ways to address the problem. The report on threatened oceanfront homes noted that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures in North Carolina are considered at risk from erosion.Among the possible solutions is hauling dredged sand to eroding beaches, something that is already being done in other communities on the Outer Banks and East Coast. But it could cost $40 million or more in Rodanthe, posing a major financial challenge for its small tax base, said Gillam, of Dare County.Other ideas include buying out threatened properties, moving or demolishing them. But those options are also very expensive. And funding is limited.U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican, recently introduced a bill in Congress that would make some money available. For example, the legislation would authorize federal flood insurance dollars to help demolish or relocate erosion-plagued homes before they collapse.Braxton Davis, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a nonprofit, said the problem isn’t limited to Rodanthe or even to North Carolina. He pointed to erosion issues along Californias coast, the Great Lakes and some of the nations rivers.This is a national issue, Davis said, adding that sea levels are rising and the situation is only going to become worse.