# 26

Opioid Antidote needs an App, according to the FDA, so that anyone can go to their smart phone and locate the nearest Naloxone - even in a neighbor's medicine cabinet - and obtain, possibly, a fatal overdose-reversing drug.  (article below)

Imagine, one responsibility of government is to schedule harmful/lethal substances and use every lawful means to investigate the manufacture and sale of such substances.  In instances where government emergency medical responders attend to near-death, criminal, substance abuse matters...this truthful information can be shared with those sworn to uphold the law.

Now imagine that another responsibility of government is to provide emergency medical care to avert overdose deaths.

Blend into these two complimentary aspects of the government's responsibilities and process the ramifications described in this article.  Let's say that Angel Purity overdosed on opioids three times in 2016 and each time EMTs responded and administered the antidote.  The three responses are documented in EMT records as are the use/cost of the antidote and the address and name of the victim to which they responded.  This data is useful across many disciplines...all, hopefully, designed to make society a better place in which to live and also, hopefully, while attempting to reduce Angel's substance addiction.

If Angel Purity's relative is able to go to an App and obtain the antidote more quickly, how will society capture the data for all of the positive reasons the data is important?  Any street narcotics detective will immediately see this as an end-run which hides the events from EMTs as well as police, courts, probation officers, drug counselors, etc.  The data is never captured.

At a time in our society when we are supposed to be contemplating every facet of an issue and taking all things into consideration, this FDA approach does not appear to have considered the data collection and law enforcement positions which are just as vital in improving our society.

Using the hypothetical adult, self-administering substance abuser Angel Purity as an example; isn't there a higher objective for our society to get Angel off the revolving cycle of overdose-antidote-back to overdose?

How many times does society need to save Angel's life before it asks itself: "When are we going to stem/curtail Angel's self-placement of her life into jeopardy?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/20/overdosing-on-heroin-and-searching-for-naloxone-the-fda-wants-an-app-for-that/?hpid=hp_rhp-morning-mix_mm-fda%3Ahomepage%2Fstory