Published: Aug. 14, 2024 at 2:24 PM PDT
Watch the video on KKTV 11 News website.
KKTV News spoke with Steve Carleton from Porch Light Health about various topics related to overdose awareness. Overdose Awareness Day is August 31.
Lauren Watson
I want to thank you for joining us here in the 11 Breaking News Center this afternoon. I’m Lauren Watson, your digital anchor here at KKTV 11 News. I’m here with Steve Carleton. He’s the Chief Clinical Officer at Porch Light Health and Front Range Clinic. And Steve, we’re here today to talk a little bit about overdose awareness. The 31st of the month is Overdose Awareness Day. And why is it important to mark a day like that?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, it’s great to be with you. And thanks for covering this important topic. It’s important for a number of reasons, but probably most importantly, because we still have over 100,000 people annually dying of overdose from fentanyl and other opiates per year. In Colorado, it’s still over 5,000 people a year. So the more we can get the word out about this, and educate the public, and people about the risk of drugs on the street today, hopefully, the more lives we can save.
Lauren Watson
Now, you mentioned Fentanyl by name. We talk a lot about Fentanyl in our monthly talks. How has Fentanyl changed the drug crisis?
Steve Carleton
Fentanyl is pretty overnight. Fentanyl has changed the whole landscape of drugs on the street. So just going back in history a little bit, this whole opiate crisis began with prescription opiates. It began with the overprescribing of OxyContin by doctors in a lot of communities, and especially on the East Coast, and in the Rust Belt. And once, legislatures, law enforcement, figured out that these prescription pills were really harming people, pharmacies turned off the faucet of manufacturing, producing, and ultimately, the prescribing of these opiates. When that happened, you had tens and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people addicted to opiates, who now are going into withdrawals, who are having significant cravings, turning to the streets to find street heroin and other prescription pills on the street. And what that high demand for these drugs created was a void that fentanyl, unfortunately, filled. Fentanyl is much easier to produce and manufacture. It’s far cheaper. With heroin, you have to have large fields of poppies, and with With fentanyl, you can do that in these small labs, like you’d see on Breaking Bad, and with really crude materials, and it’s 50 times stronger than heroin.
Steve Carleton
So that’s how we got here, with why fentanyl is now 90 to 95 % of the opiates that people are consuming on the streets now.
Lauren Watson
Now, fentanyl, like you just said, plays a large role, but But how many of overdose deaths are in part to a combination of drugs?
Steve Carleton
It’s a good question. So fentanyl is the leader in overdose, but the other The other thing that we’ve seen now that fentanyl is on the scene is that there’s all these other synthetic drugs. There’s xylizine, which is a powerful tranquilizer sedative. There’s carfentanyl, which is another derivative of fentanyl that’s that’s 100 times stronger. And so what you’ve seen is suddenly in the last five, six years, you’re just seeing this huge influx of all these synthetic drugs coming into the market. So it isn’t just fentanyl. And when we think about overdose, and I know we’ll probably talk about this a little bit more, but NARCAN is our biggest tool in this fight to save people’s lives that are overdosing. Unfortunately, NARCAN doesn’t work for xylizine and some of these other substances that are baked into these street drugs.
Lauren Watson
That actually does lead right into my next question. A lot of people have heard of NARCAN at this point, but what exactly is it, and what is its role in this fight?
Steve Carleton
So NARCAN, and one thing out there, because it can sometimes be confusing. Narcan and naloxone are the same substance, right? Narcan is just the brand name version of the generic medication naloxone. And what naloxone does is it reverses the effects of overdose. So if somebody is overdosing on fentanyl and you give them NARCAN, what that does is it basically knocks off all the opiates off of their receptors and immediately can pull them out of an overdose. You take them to a hospital still, but it saves people’s lives. The great thing about NARCAN and naloxone, it can’t hurt you. If you or me were administered naloxone or NALOXone or NARCAN right now, it would not hurt us. We wouldn’t have any ill effects from it. It’s a really important tool to use. I think the other thing I would add there is we need to get NARCAN naloxone in the hands of as many people as we can. The thing about NARCAN and naloxone is your people aren’t going to use it on themselves. You can give it to somebody that’s using fentanyl on the street, but if they overdose, you can’t administer NARCAN to yourself.
Steve Carleton
So the more people we can get this in the hands to, the more prepared they’ll be if they come across somebody that’s unconscious, and they suspect that they’re overdosing from opiates.
Lauren Watson
Following that line of thought just a little bit, if you have someone you know or a loved one that you believe might be struggling, how can you help them?
Steve Carleton
I think in particular, if somebody you know and love is addicted to opiates, procure some NARCAN, have NARCAN on hand. I know for me, in the work that I do, I carry it around in my briefcase, in my backpack, everywhere I go, because you just never know when that’s going to come handy, and could potentially save people’s lives. So what I would tell people, first and foremost, is make sure you’re carrying that medication. I think the other thing to do is just think about how you’re approaching those conversations, and make sure that you’re helping support people when they’re ready to get help. Have that number to Porch Life Health handy. Oh, you’re thinking about getting off opiates? I have a number for you to call 866 Matt Stat. If you want to go and get on Suboxone, which is the most effective way we help people get off of opiates, here you go. They can typically get you in within 24, 48 hours. Having those resources, having NARCAN on hand, if and when people get ready to make a change is critical.
Lauren Watson
Now, you mentioned that 866 Matt stat number. How else can people best find you if they are looking to make that change How would you take that next step?
Steve Carleton
I think the www.porchlighthealth.com is the other way you can go on, and there’s lots of resources and information on there. That’s another great way to Find out about us and get a hold of us.
Lauren Watson
Well, Steve, I believe those are all of the prepared questions that I have for you today. Is there anything that we touched on that you want to just be sure to emphasize, or anything we haven’t talked about yet that you really wanted to talk about our viewers before we go this afternoon?
Steve Carleton
Yeah, thanks. I think there’s a couple more things. So with NARCAN, again, you’re not going to hurt anybody if you give it to somebody, and they’re not an overdose. It comes in a nasal spray, so you’re not injecting it. You spray it up in people for example’s nasal cavity. You can buy this without a prescription at pharmacies, so you don’t need a prescription. I know there’s a lot of different places around town where you can go and get NARCAN for free, and so I would I recommend people have that on hand. You can’t help somebody that has died of an overdose. And probably the most important message, there’s no concern that providing NARCAN to people increases use. That’s one of these myths out there that gets perpetuated, and so just push them back on that a little bit as well.
Lauren Watson
Awesome. Well, Steve Carlton, Chief Clinical Officer at Porch Light Health and Front-Range Clinic. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today about overdose awareness.
Steve Carleton
Yeah, thank you.
