In response to the growing prescription pill epidemic on Staten Island, authorities began training local police in the use of nasal spray to reverse the effects of a drug overdose. And this week, it came in handy: an SI cop used the powerful nasal spray to save a 44-year-old man who was overdosing around 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Starting in December, 180 cops in the 120th Precinct of SI were trained to administer the naxolene spray as part of a pilot program. Unintentional opioid analgesic overdose deaths (ie, via OxyContin and Roxicodone) increased 267 percent between 2000 and 2011.
It's been particularly bad in SI, which has triple the opioid analgesic overdose rate of any other borough. As the News points out, the rate per 100,000 residents was five times as high as in Queens, four times as high as in Brooklyn and three times as high as in Manhattan and the Bronx. "Oxycodone is just huge, kids getting high on that," local rapper Daniel Haley told us last summer. "The kids think since they're doing prescription pills, it's not as bad as heroin, cocaine, it isn't gonna fuck you up. But they destroy lives."
