HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration says police officers in Pennsylvania reversed more than 600 heroin and opioid overdoses in a little over a year of carrying an antidote.
Administration officials gathered Tuesday with more than 100 police officers in the Capitol to recognize the officers’ life-saving efforts.
Physician General Dr. Rachel Levine says the people overdosing are suffering a disease and not a moral failing.
A 2014 law expanded access to naloxone to include law enforcement, first responders and addicts’ friends and relatives, and Levine signed a standing order in October to make it available to all Pennsylvanians.
The administration says heroin and opioid overdoses are now Pennsylvania’s leading cause of accidental deaths. It counted nearly 2,500 overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2014 and estimates the 2015 total surpassed that.
