Virtual reality opioid overdose prevention programs can be just as effective as in-person training to give people the knowledge and confidence to administer naloxone, according to a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Between 250 and 270 people die each year from heroin or opioid overdoses in Norway. In the EU, thousands die. European users now have a better option available for helping each other. Time is of the essence when a person has overdosed on heroin or other opioids. Mortality is high. But a friend can give an antidote quickly if it’s readily available.

A new initiative through the Clinton Foundation, Direct Relief International and other nonprofit and advocacy groups aims to curtail the overdose epidemic that is largely overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Every year we come together to remember the lives that have been lost due to overdose. International Overdose Awareness Day is recognized and marked around the world, and has been happening since 2001 in Australia. We’re grateful for that. But what about every other day of the year? Every day 190 overdose deaths happen in the US and 11 a day in Canada. Where is the fucking daily outrage? Can anyone really think that commemorating the millions of lives lost worldwide to this systematic drug war just once or twice a year is adequate?

Fatal overdoses may be slightly declining in the United States, according to preliminary 2018 data, but they are not falling out of public discourse⁠—and nor should they. Yet their prominence in daily news headlines and the 2020 presidential race typically glosses over important details. These omissions have consequences when over 70,000 people in the US and 585,000 people from around the world died “as a result of drug use” (not including alcohol or tobacco) in 2017.

Historian of science, technology, and medicine, Dr. Nancy Campbell, talks to HMM correspondent Corinne Carey about the controversy over the removal of park benches in downtown Troy’s Barker Park in response to open air drug use and overdoses in the park. Campbell, whose most recent book published by MIT Press in 2020 is OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose, offers a set of alternative responses that the city could turn to that would enhance public safety. In this extended version of an interview that aired on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine on WOOC 105.3 FM in the capital region, Dr. Campbell offers concrete suggestions for steps that the City of Troy could take.