After law throws wrench in distribution, Idaho restarts program to provide OD reversal drug

Idaho health officials will again begin distributing life-saving medication for opioid overdoses after a change to state law suspended the program for seven months.

The update means that organizations can once again request naloxone for free through the state. The program, which uses federal funding, will be administered “through a new partnership with Kootenai County Fire and Rescue,” according to a news release from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

Republican legislators earlier this year passed a law that restricted eligibility for the federal grants to only first responders. The change ended an established program through which state officials provided the medication through a contracted nonprofit, the Idaho Harm Reduction Project, which helps drug users through programs such as HIV testing.

The law limiting distribution to first responders remains in place.

Proponents of the state law change argued it was to ensure people who received the drug had proper training for how to use it. But state officials and first responders said it would likely increase the number of people who die from opioid overdoses by reducing the availability of naloxone.

The nonprofit distributed more than 25,000 naloxone kits in the fiscal year before the program ended. Ninety-four percent of the 1,238 overdoses reversed through the program that year were administered by someone other than a first responder, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

Naloxone — often sold under the drug name Narcan — can rapidly reverse the fatal result of an opioid overdose by blocking the effects of the drug. It can be distributed through a needle injection or in a nasal spray form, which requires the person administering it to insert a device into the nose of the person overdosing and press down on the spray bottle. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter distribution of the drug in March.

The Idaho Harm Reduction Project has taken heat from hardline conservatives in the state. In a recent video posted by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, the group called the organization a “woke nonprofit” for its needle exchange and other programs.

Under its new program, Health and Welfare is no longer distributing naloxone through the Idaho Harm Reduction Project and is instead contracting through Kootenai County Fire and Rescue, a spokesperson, A.J. McWhorter, told the Statesman by email. The first responder agency was selected after a competitive process that began in September, he said.

Health and Welfare initiated a survey earlier this month to collect information from organizations around the state and how the pause in its naloxone program affected their ability to access the medication, McWhorter said. Of the 86 former participants in the program who responded so far, more than half were unable to access naloxone during that time.